Centre for Internet and Society

Now Streaming on Your Nearest Screen

praskrishna — 2011-12-24T07:33:01Z

Digital cinema, especially the kinds that is produced using mobile devices and travelling on internet social networking systems like YouTube and MySpace, are often dismissed as apolitical and ‘merely’ a fad rather than a cultural expression and a choice. This paper explores the possibilities that new digital cinema and their circuits of circulation offer for political engagement and participation through cultural expressions and productions, which are otherwise dismissed in contemporary discourse. This peer reviewed essay was published in the Journal of Chinese Cinema, Volume 3, Issue 1, June 2009.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/now-streaming-nearest-screen.pdf

November 2018 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-12-19T02:41:01Z

Our newsletter for the month of November.

Highlights

CIS has published a statement on its website in response to the serious allegations against CIS members and the CIS workplace on social media. CIS has taken note of the concern raised on a social platform, and its Internal Committee (IC), constituted as per the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, has taken some critical steps. CIS has engaged POSH at Work to review the case and make recommendations to the Executive Director of CIS.
Anubha Sinha attended the 37th meeting of WIPO SCCR held in Geneva in the month of November 2018. During the week she made two statements on behalf of CIS and participated in a panel discussion and a closed door meeting to brief government delegates from the Asia pacific region on the WIPO limitations and exceptions agenda. CIS made statements on limitations and exceptions and the proposed treaty for the protection of broadcasting organizations. Transcript of her talk can be accessed here.
A memorandum outlining India's strategy to global cyber norms formulation processes authored by Elonnai Hickok and Arindrajit Basu and edited by Aayush Rathi and Shruti Trikanad. The memorandum seeks to summarise the state of the global debate in cyberspace; outline how India can craft it’s global strategic vision and finally, provides a set of recommendations for the Ministry of External Affairs as they craft their cyber diplomacy strategy.
The institution of open standards is as a formidable regulatory regime governing the Internet while facilitating its growth as a network of networks. As a nation digitising rapidly and facing concerns in cybersecurity and Internet governance, there is a need for the Government of India to meaningfully participate at standards development organisations to represent the interests of the Indian populace and become a voice for the global South. Authors Aayush Rathi, Gurshabad Grover and Sunil Abraham examine this in a policy brief.
The Convention on Cybercrime adopted in Budapest (“Convention”) is the first and one of the most important multilateral treaties addressing the issue of internet and computer crimes. Vipul Kharbanda has analyzed this in his research paper titled Budapest Convention and the Information Technology Act.
Amber Sinha was one of the stakeholders who provided inputs to the Danish Expert Group on Data Ethics in June 2018 during their visit to New Delhi. The Expert Group has prepared and submitted its final report.
For the fourth edition of the Internet Researchers’ Conference (IRC19), CIS invited sessions that engage critically with the form, imagination, and politics of the *list*. The list of proposed sessions are finalized and posted on this page.

Articles

Lessons from US response to cyber attacks (Arindrajit Basu; edited by Elonnai Hickok; Hindu Businessline; October 30, 2018). Mirrored on CIS website on November 1.
Digital Native: One Selfie Does a Tragedy Make (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; November 11, 2018).

CIS in the Media

Open Street Maps help tackle disasters: Experts (Deccan Chronicle; November 21, 2018).
Are connected tech toys too smart for their own good? (Abhijit Ahaskar; Livemint; November 22, 2018).
Girls' schools, women's PGs: The shocking results when you Google 'bitches near me' (News Minute; November 26, 2018).
Amazon launches Machine Learning-based platform for healthcare space (Kul Bhushan; Hindustan Times; November 28, 2018).
Report: From Oppression to Liberation: Reclaiming the Right to Privacy (Privacy International; November 28, 2018).
Are Chinese video apps violating the Indian law? (Nilesh Christopher; Economic Times; November 30, 2018).

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Access to Knowledge
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Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Copyright and Patent

Blog Entries

37th SCCR: CIS Statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations (Anubha Sinha; November 29, 2018).
37th SCCR: CIS Statement on the Agenda on Limitations and Exceptions (Anubha Sinha; November 29, 2018).
Views on on the proposed WIPO Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations at side-event organised by Knowledge Ecology International (Anubha Sinha; November 29, 2018).

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Blog Entry

Aditya 365 (Pavan Santhosh; November 7, 2018).

►Openness

Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.
Teaching

Lecture on Open Access and Open Content Licensing at ICAR (short course) (ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research; Bangalore; November 13 - 22, 2018). Anubha Sinha delivered a lecture.

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Internet Governance
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As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

►Cyber Security

Research Papers

Budapest Convention and the Information Technology Act (Vipul Kharbanda; November 20, 2018).
Cyberspace and External Affairs:A Memorandum for India Summary (Arindrajit Basu and Elonnai Hickok; edited by Aayush Rathi and Shruti Trikanad; November 30, 2018).
Regulating the Internet: The Government of India & Standards Development at the IETF (Aayush Rathi, Gurshabad Grover and Sunil Abraham; November 30, 2018).

Event Co-organized

Workshop on Cybersecurity Illustrations (CIS, Bangalore; November 15, 2018).

Participation in Events

Connections 2018 (Organized by Internet Engineering Task Force; Bangalore; October 31 - November 1, 2018). Gurshabad Grover attended the event.
IETF103 (Organized by Internet Engineering Task Force; Bangkok; November 3 - 9, 2018). Gurshabad Grover attended the event.

►Free Speech and Expression

Research Paper

ICANN Workstream 2 Recommendations on Accountability (Akriti Bopanna; November 23, 2018).

Blog Entry

DIDP #32 On ICANN's Fellowship Program (Akriti Bopanna; November 12, 2018).

Participation in Event

Internet Freedom at Crossroads - Common Paths towards Strengthening Human Rights Online (Organized by Freedom Online; Berlin; November 28 - 30, 2018). Elonnai Hickok was a speaker.

►Privacy

Blog Entry

Clarification on the Information Security Practices of Aadhaar Report (Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali; November 5, 2018).

Participation in Events

Building a Community of Practice: Reflections from 2nd All Partners (Organized by Partnership on AI; San Francisco, California; November 14 - 15, 2018). Elonnai Hickok spoke on the panel on the PAI working groups and co-lead the AI Labor and Economy working group meeting as co-chair of the group.
Briefing on BBC News pan-India research on how 'fake news' / digital misinformation spreads (Organized by BBC; New Delhi; November 16, 2018).
DSCI Bangalore Chapter meet (Organized by Data Security Council of India; 10K NASSCOM Startup Warehouse; Bangalore; November 22, 2018). Gurshabad Grover and Karan Saini attended the DSCI Bangalore Chapter meet.
Informational Privacy in India: An Emerging Discourse (Organized by Centre for Policy Research and supported by Omidyar Network; New Delhi; November 29, 2018). Amber Sinha was a speaker on the first panel on privacy and its tradeoffs.
Facebook Privacy Design Sprint (Organized by Facebook and Quicksand; WeWork, Bangalore; November 30, 2018). Pranav Bidare and Saumyaa Naidu participated in the event.

►Miscellaneous

Event Co-organized

SOTM Asia 2018 (Co-organized by CIS and Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore; November 17-18, 2018). Saumyaa Naidu, Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon participated in the event.

Participation in Events

Speculative Futures Lab on Artificial Intelligence in Media, Entertainment, and Gaming (Organized by Quicksand; Bangalore; November 16 - 18, 2018). Pranav Bidare was a panelist.
Future Tech and Future Law (Organized by Dept. of IT & BT, Government of Karnataka as part of Bengaluru Tech Summit; November 29 - December 1, 2018). Aayush Rathi was a speaker.

►Gender

Statement

Statement on Serious Allegations against CIS Members and the CIS Workplace on Social Media (Sunil Abraham; November 24, 2018).

Participation in Events

Roundtable on Intermediary Liability and Gender Based Violence at the Digital Citizen Summit, 2018 (Organized by Digital Empowerment Foundation; India International Centre, New Delhi; November 1, 2018).
International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 2018 (Co-organized by Feminist Approaches to Bioethics and Sama - A Resource Centre for Women and Health; St. John's Medical College; Bangalore; December 3 - 5, 2018). Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon participated in the event as speakers. Aayush presented a paper 'Sexual Surveillance and Data Regimes: Development in the Data Economy' co-authored by himself and Ambika.

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Article

A great start on Wi-Fi reforms (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; November 1, 2018 and Organizing India Blogspot; November 1, 2018).

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Researchers at Work
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The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

IRC19

List of proposed sessions:

#AyushmanBhavah - Arya Lakshmi and Adrij Chakraborty
#ButItIsNotFunny - Madhavi Shivaprasad and Sonali Sahoo
#CallingOutAndIn - Usha Raman, Radhika Gajjala, Riddhima Sharma, Tarishi Varma, Pallavi Guha, Sai Amulya Komarraju, and Sugandha Sehgal
#DigitalPlatformAttributes - Nandakishore K N and Dr. V. Sridhar
#EnlistingPrivacy - Pawan Singh and Pranjal Jain
#FOMO - Pritha Chakrabarti and Dr. Baidurya Chakrabarti
#LegitLists - Form follows function: List by design - Akriti Rastogi, Ishani Dey, and Sagorika Singha
#ListInterface - Bharath Sivakumar, Rakshita Siva, and Deepak Prince
#ListsAsDatabase - Ria De and Samata Biswas
#LoSHAandWhatFollowed - Anannya Chatterjee, Arunima Singh, Bhanu Priya Gupta, Renu Singh, and Rhea Bose
#PowerListing - Dr. Shubhda Arora, Dr. Smitana Saikia, Prof. Nidhi Kalra, and Prof. Ravikant Kisana
#SocialMediationAsGenderedJustice - Esther Anne Victoria Moraes and Manasa Priya Vasudevan
#StoriesRecordsLegendsRituals - Priyanka, Aditya, Bhanu Prakash GS, Aishwarya, and Dinesh

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About CIS
-----------------------------------
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer and citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/november-2018-newsletter

November 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-01-10T01:57:29Z

November 2017 Newsletter

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
Anubha Sinha took part in the 35th Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (“SCCR”) at Geneva from 13 November, 2017 to 18 November, 2017. She posed a question on the agenda 'Other Matters' on behalf of CIS on Day 5, 17 November, 2017. CIS also gave statements on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives and GRULAC Proposal for Analysis of Copyright in the Digital Environment. CIS-A2K signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Telangana Government’s IT, Electronics & Communications Department with to catalyse the development of the Wikimedia movement in Telangana and improve the state of free-licensed digital content in Telugu and Urdu. The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India has published the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW). Nirmita Narasimhan on behalf of the Centre for Internet & Society gave comments on GIGW. The government has already set up a Nudge unit; now, it should apply the Nobel laureate's insights on auctions relating to essential infrastructure wrote Shyam Ponappa in an article in the Business Standard on November 1, 2017. DataMeet and CIS have collaborated on identifying and addressing the challenges to open up and integrate data and information in the water sector. CIS commented on the Consultation Paper on Privacy, Security and Ownership of Data in Telecom Sector published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on August 9, 2017. CIS published a report that compares laws and regulations in the United Kingdom and India to see the similarities and disjunctions in cyber security policy between them. CIS sent comments on TRAI consultation paper on promoting local telecom equipment manufacturing. The submission drew on research primarily done in the Pervasive Technologies project.

Highlights

Anubha Sinha took part in the 35th Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (“SCCR”) at Geneva from 13 November, 2017 to 18 November, 2017. She posed a question on the agenda 'Other Matters' on behalf of CIS on Day 5, 17 November, 2017. CIS also gave statements on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives and GRULAC Proposal for Analysis of Copyright in the Digital Environment.
CIS-A2K signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Telangana Government’s IT, Electronics & Communications Department with to catalyse the development of the Wikimedia movement in Telangana and improve the state of free-licensed digital content in Telugu and Urdu.
The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India has published the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW). Nirmita Narasimhan on behalf of the Centre for Internet & Society gave comments on GIGW.
The government has already set up a Nudge unit; now, it should apply the Nobel laureate's insights on auctions relating to essential infrastructure wrote Shyam Ponappa in an article in the Business Standard on November 1, 2017.
DataMeet and CIS have collaborated on identifying and addressing the challenges to open up and integrate data and information in the water sector.
CIS commented on the Consultation Paper on Privacy, Security and Ownership of Data in Telecom Sector published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on August 9, 2017.
CIS published a report that compares laws and regulations in the United Kingdom and India to see the similarities and disjunctions in cyber security policy between them.
CIS sent comments on TRAI consultation paper on promoting local telecom equipment manufacturing. The submission drew on research primarily done in the Pervasive Technologies project.

CIS in the News:

Big Data for governance (Alekhya Hanumanthu; Telangana Today; November 4, 2017).
How tech is making life easier for differently-abled (Shalini Umachandrani; November 7, 2017).
India Today Conclave Next 2017: Aadhaar was rushed, says MP Rajeev Chandrashekhar (Priya Pathak; India Today; November 8, 2017).
What You Need To Worry About Before Linking Your Mobile Number With Aadhaar (Roopa Raju and Shekhar Rai; Youth Ki Awaaz; November 8, 2017).
OPINION | Data is New Oil and Human Mind the New Battlefield. India Must Wake Up Now (Lt. General (Retd.) D. S. Hooda; News18.com; November 11, 2017).
Aadhaar seeding: benefits and concerns (Shaikh Zoaib Saleem; Livemint; November 14, 2017).
Privacy issues exist even without Aadhaar (Ronald Abraham; November 15, 2017).
Advocating for Openness: Nine Ways Civil Society Groups Have Mobilized to Defend Internet Freedom (Centre for International Media Assistance; November 15, 2017).
Govt working to set up financial CERT to tackle cyber threats (Komal Gupta; Livemint; November 16, 2017).
Financial CERT to combat cyber threats, says MoS home affairs (CISO MAG; November 17, 2017).
UIDAI admits 210 government websites made Aadhaar details public (Financial Express; November 20, 2017).
India’s internet missionaries: The women Google is relying on to spread its Next Billion message (Sunny Sen; Livemint; November 21, 2017).
FCC’s plan to repeal net neutrality may not impact India (Surabhi Agarwal; Economic Times; November 23, 2017).
Indian activists slam FCC decision to ditch net neutrality (Kul Bhushan; Hindustan Times; November 23, 2017).
FCC’s plan to repeal net neutrality may not impact India (Surabhi Agarwal; Economic Times; November 23, 2017).
Why should you keep a close eye on the net neutrality debate in the US (Subhrojit Mallick; Digit; November 24, 2017).
Cyberattacks a significant threat to democracy: Modi (Komal Gupta; Livemint; November 24, 2017).
Aadhaar verification at airports raises need for stricter data privacy regulations (Aman Sethi; Hindustan Times, November 27, 2017).
IDAP Interview Series: Interview with Nirmita Narasimhan (IDIA Law; November 27, 2017).
Govt releases white paper on data protection framework (Komal Gupta; Livemint; November 28, 2017).
Bengalureans to receive Helen Keller award (Deccan Herald; November 30, 2017).

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Accessibility & Inclusion
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India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

Submission

Comments on Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (Nirmita Narasimhan; November 26, 2017).

►Copyright & Patent

35th SCCR: CIS Statement on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives (Anubha Sinha; November 15, 2017).
35th SCCR: CIS Statement on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives (Anubha Sinha; November 17, 2017).
35th SCCR: CIS' Question to Dr. Rostama on her Study on the Impact of the Digital Environment on Copyright Legislation (Anubha Sinha; November 19, 2017).

►Wikipedia

Blog Entry

CIS-A2K signs MoU with Telangana Government (Manasa Rao; November 8, 2017).

►Openness

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Internet Governance
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►Privacy

Blog Entries

A Comparison of Legal and Regulatory Approaches to Cyber Security in India and the United Kingdom (Divij Joshi; edited by Elonnai Hickok; November 12, 2017).
Counter Comments on TRAI's Consultation Paper on Privacy, Security and Ownership of Data in Telecom Sector (Amber Sinha; November 23, 2017).

Participation in Event

BIS International Seminar on Internet of Things (Organized by BIS; November 15, 2017; India Habitat Centre, New Delhi). Amber Sinha attended the event.
Internet Universality Indicators for a Safe, Secure and Inclusive Cyberspace for Sustainable Development (Organized by UNESCO in collaboration with the Ministry of Electronics and IT, Government of India; UNESCO Conference Room, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi; November 17, 2017). Amber Sinha attended the event.

Roundtable on Data Integrity and Privacy (Organized by Observer Research Foundation; November 18, 2017). The round table discussion was chaired by Shri Baijayant Panda, Hon'ble Member of Parliament.

►Cyber Security

Blog Entry

Breach Notifications: A Step towards Cyber Security for Consumers and Citizens (Amelia Andersdotter; November 14, 2017).

Event Organized

Roundtable on Enhancing Indian Cyber Security through Multi-Stakeholder Cooperation (Indian Islamic Centre; Lodhi Road; New Delhi; November 4, 2017).
Open House on Security Practices in FinTech (Organized by CIS and Has Geek; November 17, 2017).

Participation in Event

Multinational Cyber Security Forum at University of Haifa (Organized by Center for Cyber, Law and Policy and University of Haifa in collaboration with the Hewlett Foundation Cyber Initiative; November 5 - 7, 2017). Sunil Abraham participated in the meeting held in Israel.
Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (GCSC) (Organized by GCSC; November 21, 2017; New Delhi). Pranesh Prakash participated in the event.

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Article

Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler's Views On Auctions (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; November 1, 2017).

Submission

Comments on TRAI Consultation Paper on Promoting Local Telecom Equipment Manufacturing (Anubha Sinha; November 26, 2017).

Articles

Digital native: Rebellion by Google Doc (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; November 4, 2017)
Digital native: Let there be life (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; November 19, 2017).

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About CIS
-----------------------------------
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/november-2017-newsletter

November 2016 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-02-06T12:52:38Z

Welcome to the November 2016 newsletter of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

Dear readers,

As we bring in the new year here at CIS, we thank you for your continued interest and support.

Over the course of the previous year, government services and functions became more dependent on information technologies, concerns over cybersecurity and the vulnerability of electronic infrastructure grew, and new developments and challenges arose in the fields of Internet governance and free speech and expression.

In the wake of this major year of developments, the work that CIS does is even more important. We look forward to engaging with these and other emerging issues, in 2017 and beyond.

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
Geethanjali Jujjavarapu and Udbhav Tiwari undertook a high-level literature review of the most commonly used technological tools and processes in the big data life cycle. In the research paper the authors have argued that big data life cycle is a conceptual construct that can be used to study the various stages that typically occur in collecting, storing and analysing big data, along with the principles that can govern these processes. Nirmita Narasimhan in a blog post published by Your Story has thrown light on the various challenges which persons with disabilities have to overcome. She has stressed that promoting use of technology and open source software and imparting training at an early age will go a long way in making students with disabilities self-sufficient and independent. Government of India's work is not available under free and open licenses as is the case in various other nations. Tito Dutta has called upon the Indian government to make its work freely licensed, wherever possible and applicable. The 33rd WIPO-SCCR was held in Geneva from November 14 - 18, 2016. Anubha Sinha attended the meeting. CIS made its statements on the GRULAC Proposal for Analysis of Copyright in the Digital Environment and the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations. What if our phones were to go silent? Would you be able to deal with the silence? Nishant Shah has explored this in an article published in the Indian Express. In a consolidated compilation titled Privacy after Big Data we have put together a series of articles that we have developed as we explore the impacts – positive and negative – of big data. This is a growing body of research that we are exploring and is relevant to multiple areas of our work including privacy and surveillance. CIS has called for comments for this compilation. The second Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC17) is scheduled to take place in Bengaluru between March 3 - 5, 2017. From the 23 submitted session proposals CIS will select 10 to be part of the final Conference agenda. The selection will be done through votes casted by the teams that have proposed the sessions. This will take place in December 2016.

CIS in the news:

Using Kannada in technology made easier with smartphones (New Indian Express; November 1, 2016).
'Delink ICANN from US jurisdiction' (Deccan Herald; November 12, 2016).
Google, Facebook will not place ads on sites distributing fake news (John Riberio; IDG News Service and CIO; November 14, 2016).
How The U.K. Got A Better Deal From Facebook Than India Did (Payaswini Upadhyay; Bloomberg Quint; November 17, 2016).
The thrill of saving India from cybercrime (Peerzada Abrar; Hindu; November 20, 2016).
Free Net advocates flay Trai's public Wi-Fi paper (Anita Babu; Business Standard; November 20, 2016).
Popular apps are inaccessible to millions of disabled: Study (Arpita Raj; The Times of India and ET Brand Equity; November 21, 2016).
Caught in a filter bubble (Chethana Divya Vasudev; November 22, 2016).
A world apart (Meera Siva; Hindu Businessline; November 27, 2016).
Disabled kid? sorry, no admission! (New Indian Express; November 28, 2016).
Guru Gomke is a Stylish Ol Chiki Typeface for India’s Santali Speakers (AIGA.org; November 29, 2016).

CIS members wrote the following articles

Where Are There So Few Books For The Print-Impaired? (Nirmita Narasimhan; Huffington Post; November 3, 2016).
4 tips for DIY makers (Subhashish Panigrahi; November 18, 2016).
Digital native: The Voices in Our Heads (Nishant Shah; November 20, 2016).
The Quest for Education – Persons with Disabilities, Severely Challenged (Nirmita Narasimhan; Your Story; November 24, 2016).
Demonetisation Survey Limits the Range of Feedback that can be Provided by the User (Udbhav Tiwari; November 24, 2016).

Jobs

CIS is presently seeking applications for the following positions

Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
Senior Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
Intern (Pervasive Technologies Project) - Application accepted throughout the year
Internship - Application accepted throughout the year
Survey Participants for Research on Musician Livelihood

►Copyright & Patent

Blog Entries

33rd SCCR: Opening Statement by India on behalf of the Asia and the Pacific Group (Anubha Sinha; November 14, 2016).
33rd SCCR: CIS Statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations (Anubha Sinha; November 16, 2016).
33rd SCCR: CIS Statement on the GRULAC Proposal for Analysis of Copyright in the Digital Environment (Anubha Sinha; November 18, 2016).

►Wikipedia

Event Organized

Sambalpur University Workshop (Sambalpur; November 27, 2016).

Participation in Event

CIIPC-NLUD Workshop on Wikipedia Editing and Open Source Knowledge Sources (Organized by Centre for Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Competition (CIIPC), National Law university, Delhi; November 11 - 12, 2016). Rohini Lakshané and Tanveer Hasan conducted and facilitated this workshop.

Blog Entries

Wikipedia Asian Month — 2016 iteration starts on 1 November (Tito Dutta; November 1, 2016)
100 Wikidays: The Journey so Far (Tito Dutta; November 23, 2016)
Free Knowledge and Indian Government Work (Tito Dutta; November 26, 2016).
Improving Telugu Village Articles (Pavan Santhosh; November 26, 2016).

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Internet Governance
-----------------------------------

►Privacy

Blog Entry

Conference on the Digitalization of the Indian Legal System (Leilah Elmokadem; November 16, 2016)

Participation in Event

Industry Consultation Panel on Data Retention - DSCI (Organized by the Data Security Council of India; New Delhi; November 23, 2016). Udbhav Tiwari was a panelist.

►Big Data

Blog Entry

Privacy after Big Data: Compilation of Early Research (Saumyaa Naidu; November 12, 2016).
Big Data in India: Benefits, Harms, and Human Rights - Workshop Report (Vidushi Marda, Akash Deep Singh and Geethanjali Jujjavarapu; November 14, 2016).

►Cyber Security

Blog Entry

CERT-In's Proactive Mandate - A Report on the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team’s Proactive Mandate in the Indian Cyber Security Ecosystem (Udbhav Tiwari; November 19, 2016).

►Free Speech and Expression

Blog Entries

If the DIDP Did Its Job (Asvatha Babu; November 3, 2016)
Internet's Core Resources are a Global Public Good - They Cannot Remain Subject to One Country's Jurisdiction (Vidushi Marda; November 9, 2016)
How Workstream 2 Plans to Improve ICANN's Transparency (Asvatha Babu; November 10, 2016).
ICANN Begins its Sojourn into Open Data (Padmini Baruah and Sumandro Chattapadhyay; November 11, 2016).
Navigating the 'Reconsideration' Quagmire (A Personal Journey of Acute Confusion).

Participation in Events

ICANN 57 (Organized by Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India; Hyderabad International Convention Centre; November 3 - 9, 2016). Vidushi Marda was a speaker.
10th NLSIR Symposium - Regulating E-Commerce in India (Organized by National Law School of India University, Bengaluru; November 27, 2016). Vidushi Marda was a panelist.

Blog Entry

Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) - Selection of Sessions (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; November 16, 2016).

Event Organized

CISxScholars Delhi - William F. Stafford (CIS; New Delhi; November 3, 2016).

-----------------------------------

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► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/november-2016-newsletter

November 2015 Report

praskrishna — 2015-12-16T13:06:31Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/november-2015-report.pdf

November 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2016-01-03T12:42:42Z

Our newsletter for the month of November 2015 is below:

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is happy to share the eleventh issue of CIS newsletter (November 2015). Previous editions of the newsletter can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

-------------------------------
Highlights
-------------------------------

The Internet Governance Forum was held at Jao Pessoa in Brazil from November 10 to 13, 2015. The theme for IGF 2015 was Evolution of Internet Governance: Empowering Sustainable Development. Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash and Jyoti Panday participated. Overall CIS spoke in 10 panels. Jyoti Panday has summarized the developments.
Draft Outcome Document of the UN General Assembly's Overall Review of implementation of WSIS Outcomes was released on 4 November 2015. Comments were sought on the Draft Outcome Document from diverse stakeholders. CIS responded to the call .
The first draft of the National IPR Policy was released last December. Comments and suggestions were submitted to the DIPP on this. Akshath Mithal in his blog post analysed the comments available online and the trends that he was able to find.
Ramya Chandrasekhar wrote a blog post that has deconstructed and explained some aspects of the various proposals to enhance ICANN's accountability.
Mangalore based cultural centre Maand Sobhaann recently relicensed 3 of their publications under a free license so that the books could be digitised on Konkani Wikisource and enrich Konkani Wikipedia. Rahmanuddin Shaik and Tanveer Hasan have captured the development in a blog post.
Japreet Grewal in a blog post has attempted to understand the domain in which censorship laws are penetrating today giving the example of the role of group admin in Whatsapp.
Elonnai Hickok in a policy brief has reviewed different oversight mechanisms from the US, UK, and Canada and provides recommendations for ways in which India can strengthen its present oversight mechanisms for state surveillance and the intelligence community.
Rohan George has reviewed the literature surrounding big data and predictive policing and has provided an analysis of the legal implications of using predictive policing techniques in the Indian context.
Large blocks of underused spectrum lie tantalizingly out of reach, waiting for enabling regulation, administration, and to some extent technology, to accelerate our move towards Digital India, according to Shyam Ponappa's column published in the Business Standard.
CIS in collaboration with T.A.J. Residency & SKE Projects and or-bits.com developed Silicon Plateau Vol-1. This book marks the beginning of an interdisciplinary artistic project, Silicon Plateau, the scope of which is to observe how the arts, technology and society intersect in the city of Bangalore.
P.P. Sneha has outlined a few questions/conflicts that the digital practitioners in arts and humanities disciplines are grappling with in the first among seven sections that has been published.
Centre for the Study of Culture and Society and CIS has set up the CSCS Digital Innovation Fund. The objective is to encourage, host, and provide seed funding for the development of digital tools and infrastructure for arts, humanities, and social science research in India. The fund will be administered by the RAW programme at CIS.

----------------------------------------------
Accessibility and Inclusion
----------------------------------------------
Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing a project on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

# Monthly Updates

November 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; November 30, 2015).

►Other

International Day of People with Disability (Organized by Capgemini; Bangalore; November 30, 2015). Nirmita Narasimhan was a panelist.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Access to Knowledge
-----------------------------------------------------------
As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Pervasive Technologies

# Blog Entries

MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIT Roorkee (Karan Tripathi and Nehaa Chaudhari; November 17, 2015). Nehaa Chaudhari provided inputs, analysed, reviewed and edited this blog post.
A Study of J. Sai Deepak's Comments on Competition Law in India (Aarushi Bansal; November 19, 2015). Nehaa Chaudhari gave inputs and edited the blog entry.
The Procedure of CCI in cases of Anti-Competitive Agreements and Abuse of Dominant Position: A Flow-Chart (Sarthak Sood; November 24, 2015).

►Copyright and Patent

# Blog Entries

Ministry Clearances for the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest 2015 (Swaraj Barooah; November 18, 2015).
National IPR Policy: Mapping the Stakeholders' Response (Akshath Mithal; November 24, 2015). Nehaa Chaudhari provided inputs and feedback and also edited this post.

# Participation in Events

Second Meeting of the Expert Committee on WIPO (Organized by Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Govt. of India; New Delhi; November 2, 2015).
International Conference on Evolving Regime in Intellectual Property Protection (Organized by Jawaharlal Nehru University; New Delhi; November 2 - 4, 2015).
India - Europe Conference on Building a Sustainable IPR - ICT Ecosystem for Promoting Innovation (Organized by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing; Bangalore; November 20, 2015). Rohini Lakshané attended this event.

►Wikipedia

# Blog Entries

Konkani-language books from Konkani-language culture center Mannd Sobhaann to enrich Konkani Wikipedia (Rahmanuddin Shaik and Tanveer Hasan; November 1, 2015).
Guerrilla GLAMː An alternate way of doing GLAM in indie-way (Subhashish Panigrahi; Wikimedia Blog; November 25, 2015). This was published in the GLAM-wiki newsletter for November.

# Participation in Events

Making Tulu Wikipedia 'Live' (Organized by Tulu Sahitya Akademy; Mangalore; October 28 - 29 and November 5 - 6, 2015). Rahmanuddin interacted with Tulu Wikipedians. Rahmanuddin was also invited to be a part of the World Konkani Literature festival where he spoke briefly about Konkani Wikipedia to the gathering.
Open Source India 2015 (by EFY Group; NIMHANS Convention Centre, Bangalore; November 19 - 20, 2015). Subhashish Panigrahi attended the event.
Tulu Wikipedia Tutorial (Organized by Wikipedia community; Mangalore; November 2015). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja trained the people involved in the creation of the Tutorial video.
FUEL GILT Conference 2015 (Organized by Mozilla Corporation, Centre for Development of Advance Computing (C-DAC), Pune and Red Hat; Tamil Virtual Academy, Anna University Campus, Gandhi Mandapam Road, Kottur, Chennai; November 20 - 22, 2015). Subhashish Panigrahi spoke at the event.

# Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following:

शंभर वर्षांपूर्वीच्या पुस्तकांचे होणार डिजिटायझेशन (Lokmat; November 11, 2015).
Dr. Pavanaja featured in Kannada Daily (Vijayavani; November 16, 2015).
तेसर फ्यूल कॉन्फरेंस आओर मोज़िला हैकाथन संपन्न (esamaad; November 19, 2015).
ଅନ୍‌ଲାଇନରେ ପଢ଼ିହେବ ଜଗନ୍ନାଥ ପ୍ରସାଦ ଦାସଙ୍କ ୩୦ଟି ବହି (Sambad; November 19, 2015).
तीसरा फ्यूल कॉन्फ्रेंस और मोज़िला हैकाथन संपन्न (Surkhiyan; November 23, 2015).
तीसरा फ्यूल जिल्ट कॉन्फ्रेंस और मोज़िला हैकाथन चेन्नई में संपन्न (Aaj Tak; November 24, 2015).
भाषाई कंप्यूटिंग के मानक बनाने के लिए चेन्नई में हुआ तीसरा फ्यूल जिल्‍ट (Outlook; November 26, 2015).

The following were published in October but mirrored on the CIS website recently:

मराठी पुस्तके 'विकिस्रोत' ला, सकाळ (Sakaal; October 28, 2015).
'महाराष्ट्र ग्रंथोत्तेजक' होणार लोकाभिमुख, महाराष्ट्र टाईम्स (Maharashtra Times; October 28, 2015).
महाराष्ट्र ग्रंथोत्तेजक संस्थेमधील एक हजार ग्रंथ ऑनलाईन (Saamna; October 30, 2015).

►Openness

Design Public Conclave, 6th Edition (Organized by by Civic Labs, an initiative of the Center for Knowledge Studies, and part of the Vihara Innovation Network, in partnership with Social Innovation Exchange, Okapi, Business World, Business World for Smart Cities, and the Delhi Jal Board; New Delhi; November 3, 2015). Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Amber Sinha participated in the event.

-----------------------------------------------
Internet Governance
-----------------------------------------------
As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.

►Internet Governance Forum

IGF 2015 was held at Jao Pessoa in Brazil from November 10 to 13, 2015. The theme for IGF 2015 was Evolution of Internet Governance: Empowering Sustainable Development. Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash and Jyoti Panday participated. Overall CIS spoke in 10 panels.

The Social Role of the Communications and the Strengthening of the Freedom of Expression Panel - "Cultural Diversity and Freedom of Expression" (Organized by Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Communications of Brazil; Jao Pessoa, Brazil; November 9, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a panelist. Thirty-three participants took part in this pre-event.
Open Forum - DINL, Digital Infrastructure Association (Organized by Digital Infrastructure Netherlands Foundation; Jao Pessoa, Brazil; November 10, 2015). Jyoti Panday was a speaker at this workshop. CIS participated in the open forum to discuss the increase in government engagement with "the internet" to protect their citizens against crime and abuse and to protect economic interests and critical infrastructures. Thirteen participants attended the open forum.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Internet Economy (Organized by Multistakeholder Advisory Group; Jao Pessoa, Brazil; November 11, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a panelist. Fifty five delegates attended the event. CIS participated in the discussions focusing on internet economy and internet role in sustainable development goals.
Cases on the right to be forgotten, what have we learned? (Jao Pessoa, Brazil; November 11, 2015). Jyoti Panday attended the event. CIS took part in the event to understand arguments, scope, discussions and current situation of the Right to be Forgotten outside the EU and around the world in rulings and legislations. Fifty four participants attended the event.
The Benefits and Challenges of the "Free Flow" of Data (Organized by Public Knowledge; Jao Pessoa, Brazil; November 12, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a panelist. Twenty-four delegates attended the event. CIS was part of the panel which discusssed the many benefits and challenges of the free flow of data. The workshop fostered a discussion of the ways in which stakeholders could address the underlying reasons for data flow restrictions.
Encryption and Anonymity: Rights and Risks (Organized by ARTICLE 19 and Privacy International; Jao Pessoa, Brazil; November 12, 2015). Pranesh Prakash was a speaker. CIS participated in the roundtable that discussed recommendations and the latest challenges to the protection of anonymity and encryption. Sixty three delegates attended.
A Dialogue on "Zero Rating" and Network Neutrality (Organized by Chalmers & Associates; Jao Pessoa; Brazil; November 12, 2015). Pranesh Prakash was a speaker. CIS took part in the discussion to promote access to expert insight and multi-stakeholder community discussion. Eighty five delegates attended the session.
Empowering the next billion by improving accessibility (Organized by Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability and Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs; November 13, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a panelist. Pranesh Prakash participated in the discussions. CIS took part in the discussions that examined the technological and programmatic solutions available today for an effective removal of such barriers, potentially bringing a considerable number of new users to the Internet.
FOSS & a Free, Open Internet: Synergies for Development (Organized by Civil Society; Jao Pessoa, Brazil; November 13, 2015). Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash spoke at the event. CIS took part in the discussions that explored links between the Free and Open nature of the Internet and the Free and Open Source Software through a series of experience sharing among the speakers as well as audiences.
Transnational Due Process: A Case Study in MS Cooperation (Organized by Internet & Jurisdiction Project; Jao Pessoa; November 13, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a panelist. The tension between the cross-border nature of the Internet and diverse national jurisdictions is a prime concern. The round-table described the method employed to develop this framework, challenges encountered and solutions found as well as the potential distribution of roles among the respective stakeholders in the operation of the diverse framework components. Twelve delegates attended this workshop.

►Big Data

# Article

Connected Trouble (Sunil Abraham; November 1, 2015).

# Blog Entry

Predictive Policing: What is it, How it works, and its Legal Implications (Rohan George; November 24, 2015).

# Event Organized

Big Data in the Global South International Workshop (Organized by Institute for Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro; Hotel Windsor Florida, Rua Ferreira Viana, Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; November 16 - 17, 2015). Sunil Abraham and Vipul Kharbanda were speakers at this event.

# Participation in Event

Leveraging Mobile Network Big Data for Development Policy: Opportunities & Challenges (Organized by LIRNEasia; IDRC, New Delhi; November 27, 2015).

►Privacy

# Blog Entries

Policy Brief: Oversight Mechanisms for Surveillance (Elonnai Hickok; November 24, 2015).
The Short-lived Adventure of India's Encryption Policy (Bhairav Acharya; November 27, 2015). This was originally written for the Berkeley Information Privacy Law Association.

# Participation in Event

ISO/IEC/ JTC 1/SC 27 Working Groups Meeting (Organized by Bureau of Indian Standards and Data Security Council of India; Jaipur; October 26 – 30, 2015). Vanya Rakesh attended the meeting.

►Free Speech, Expression and Censorship

# Submission

Comments on the Draft Outcome Document of the UN General Assembly's Overall Review of the Implementation of WSIS Outcomes (WSIS+10) (Geetha Hariharan; November 18, 2015).

# Article

The Humpty-Dumpty Censorship of Television in India (Bhairav Acharya; The Wire; September 23, 2015). The article was mirrored on CIS website recently.

# Blog Entries

Breaking Down ICANN Accountability: What It Is and What the Internet Community Wants (Ramya Chandrasekhar; November 5, 2015).
Summary Report Internet Governance Forum 2015 (Jyoti Panday; November 23, 2015).
The Case of Whatsapp Group Admins (Japreet Grewal; November 26, 2015).

►Cyber Security

# Participation in Events

Technology, Innovation and Societal Change (Organized by Indian Institute of Management; Bangalore; November 4, 2015). Vanya Rakesh attended the event.
Ground Zero Summit (Organized by Infosec Consortium; November 5 - 8, 2015; New Delhi). Amber Sinha attended the event.
Cyber Security Summit 2015 (Organized by Government of Karnataka in association with Biz Wingz Production House; JW Marriot, Bangalore; November 27, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a panelist.

►Miscellaneous

# Article

WhatsApps with fireworks, apps with diyas: Why Diwali needs to go beyond digital (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; November 23, 2015).

--------------------------------
Telecom
--------------------------------
CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

# Op-ed

The Buzz Around TV White Space (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; November 4, 2015 and Organizing India Blogspot; November 5, 2015).

# Blog Entry

Gauging Users' Reactions Towards Zero Rating (Aadya Misra; November 25, 2015). The author likes to thank Amba Kak, on whose research the survey was conducted.

--------------------------------
Researchers at Work
--------------------------------
The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by contemporary concerns to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It is interested in producing local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

# Book

Silicon Plateau Vol-1 (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; November 28, 2015).

# Blog Entries

Digital Humanities in India? (P.P. Sneha; November 12, 2015).
A Question of Digital Humanities (P.P. Sneha; November 16, 2015).
CSCS Digital Innovation Fund (CDIF) (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; November 16, 2015).

# Event Organized

Launch of Silicon Plateau Vol-1 (Organized by Or-bits.com and CIS; T.A.J. Residency, Wheeler Road Extension, Cooke Town, Bangalore; November 27, 2015).

# Upcoming Event

First Edition of Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) 2016 - Studying Internet in India: Call for Sessions (Organized by CIS; New Delhi; February 25 - 27, 2016).

---------------------------------
News & Media Coverage
---------------------------------

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Come, be my guest (Hindu; November 14, 2015)
Shopping on apps raise privacy and security concerns (Vivek Ananth; Softcopy, an IIJNM Web Publication; November 23, 2015).

---------------------------------
About CIS
---------------------------------

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of
social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

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► Support Us

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► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/november-2015-bulletin

November 2014 NVDA eSpeak Report

praskrishna — 2014-12-07T11:38:14Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/november-e-speak-nvda-2014-report.pdf

November 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-12-15T13:27:04Z

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the eleventh issue of the newsletter (November 2014).

Highlights

On 13 November, 2014, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion had released a Call for Suggestions for India's proposed National IPR Policy. CIS sent its comments.
As part of the Pervasive Technologies we published four methodology documents: Rohini Lakshané wrote on Patent Landscaping for the Indian Mobile Device market ; Anubha Sinha wrote on Intellectual Property in Mobile Application Development in India ; Maggie Huang wrote on Access to Music through the Mobile; and Nehaa Chaudhari wrote on Sub Hundred Dollar Mobile Devices and Competition Law .
Odisha's most circulated newspaper Sambad has collaborated with CIS-A2K to relicense 19 books published by its sister concern "Ama Odisha".
Vipul Kharbanda in a blog entry examines the relationship between privacy and transparency in the context of the right to information in India .
Geetha Hariharan in a blog entry explores what India's ITU proposal means for Internet Governance.
Pranesh Prakash wrote an article in the Economic Times exploring net neutrality.
In her final blog post on the mapping exercise undertaken by CIS-RAW, P.P.Sneha summarises some of the key concepts and terms that emerged as significant in the discourse around Digital Humanities in India.

►Job

Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge - Institutional Partnerships): CIS is seeking applications for the post of Programme Officer for its Access to Knowledge (A2K) Programme. The position will be based in its Bangalore office. Programme Officer will collaboratively work with the A2K Team and would report to the Programme Director, Access to Knowledge at CIS.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The publication has been finalised and is currently in the process of being printed. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

November 2014 Report (Suman Dogra; November 30, 2014).

Upcoming Event

Training in Use of eSpeak with Malayalam (co-organized by CIS, DAISY Forum of India and Chakshumathi Assistive Technology Centre; Trivandrum; January 24 - 25, 2015, Trivandrum).

►Other

Blog Entry

Central Guidelines and Schemes (Anandhi Viswanathan; November 6, 2014).

Access to Knowledge

As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

Submission

Comments on the Proposed Intellectual Property Rights Policy to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (Pranesh Prakash, Nehaa Chaudhari, Anubha Sinha and Amulya P.; November 30, 2014).

Blog Entries

MHRD IPR Chairs - Underutilization of Funds and Lack of Information Regarding Expenditures (Amulya Purushothama, November 19, 2014).

Participation in Events

Ubiquity, Mobility, Globality: Charting Directions in Mobile Phone Studies (Organized by Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; November 6 - 7, 2014). Nehaa Chaudhari made a presentation on Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace.
Countering US pressures on India's IP regime (Organized by Lawyer's Collective; November 16, 2014). Anubha Sinha attended the event.
Technology and Gender Based Violence (Organized by the Bachchao Project; November 24, 2014). Rohini Lakshané was a speaker at the event. She spoke about various strategies that women use to respond to online harassment, such as reporting the abuser, and enlisting support from online followers, or friends or family in order to deal with the abuser.

►Pervasive Technology

Blog Entries

Methodology: Patent Landscaping (Rohini Lakshané; November 10, 2014).
Methodology: Intellectual Property in Mobile Application Development in India (Anubha Sinha; November 17, 2014).
Methodology: Access to Music through the Mobile (Maggie Huang; November 18, 2014).
Methodology: Sub Hundred Dollar Mobile Devices and Competition Law (Nehaa Chaudhari; November 25, 2014).

►Wikipedia

Op-Ed

Odia Wikisource, its Potential (Subhashish Panigrahi, The Samaja, November 17, 2014).

Blog Entries

55 Works of Iconic Indian writer released under Free Licence to benefit Wikisource (T. Vishnu Vardhan, November 13, 2014).
Odia author Nirmala Kumari Mohapatra's 21 books relicensed under CC-by-SA 4.0 (Subhashish Panigrahi, November 17, 2014).
Nineteen Books Published by Ama Odisha Relicensed under CC-by-SA 4.0 (Subhashish Panigrahi, November 25, 2014).

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

ಭಾಷಣದಿಂದ ಭಾಷೆ ಉಳಿಯಲ್ಲ, ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲೇ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಸಿಗುವುದು ಅಗತ್ಯ: ಪವನಜ (Just Kannada; November 23, 2014).
Kannada Wikipedia Presentation in Mysuru (Prajavani; November 24, 2014).
Now, Tulu set to be promoted through Wikipedia articles (Hindu; November 24, 2014).
'Tulu Wikipedia' in incubation stage, 600 articles uploaded, says U.B. Pavanaja (Ravi Prasad Kamila; Hindu; November 26, 2014).
Odia Wikisource launched in Odisha capital (Odisha Sun Times; November 28, 2014).
Odia Wikisource aims to bring valuable and rare books on the Internet (Odisha Diary; November 28, 2014).

Event Co-organized

Odia Wikisource Sabha 2014 (Co-organized by CIS-A2K and Odia Wikimedia Community; November 28, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

Participation in Event

A Seminar on E-publishing of Odia Books (Organized by Molybtech Technology Solutions; November 30, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi was a speaker.

►Openness

Blog Entry

Privacy vs. Transparency: An Attempt at Resolving the Dichotomy (Sunil Abraham with feedback and inputs from Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Elonnai Hickok, Bhairav Acharya and Geetha Hariharan; November 14, 2014).

News and Media Coverage

Getting Strategic about Openness and Privacy (Tim Davies; Open Data Research Lead at Web Foundation; November 3, 2014).

Participation in Event

Content co-ordination for the Panel Discussion on Crypto-Currencies (organized by the Law and Technology Society; November 15, 2014). Sharath Chandra Ram was a panelist and made a presentation Scalability and Security Issues in Distributed Trust based Cryto-Currency Systems like BITCOIN

Internet Governance

►Privacy

As part of our Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project with Privacy International we are engaged in enhancing respect for the right to privacy in developing countries. During the month we published the following blog entries:

Blog Entries

White Paper on RTI and Privacy V1.2 (Vipul Kharbanda; November 9, 2014).
Introduction: About the Privacy and Surveillance Roundtables (Manoj Kurbet; November 27, 2014).

Event Organized

IOCOSE's talk at CIS (CIS, Bangalore; November 27, 2014). There was a presentation of the work of the artists group IOCOSE, current artists in residence at T.A.J./SKE Residency.

Upcoming Event

CPDP 2015 : The eighth international conference on computers, privacy and data protection will be held in Brussels from January 21 to 23, 2015. CIS is a moral supporter of CPDP.

Participation in Events

E-Consultation on Cyber Security, Justice, and Governance Begins! (Organized by the Hague Institute for Global Justice; November 4, 2014). Sunil Abraham facilitated the e-consultation on "Internet access, the freedom of expression online, and development in the Global South".
Learning Forum: Transparency and Human Rights in the Digital Age (Organized by Global Network Initiative; November 6, 2014). Pranesh Prakash gave a talk on transparency reports and their use and abuse in India; the Intermediary Liability Rules in India (and its non-provision of any transparency mechanism); and the need for transparency in private speech regulation, not just governmental speech regulation.
Fourth Discussion Meeting of the Expert Committee to Discuss the Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill (Organized by the Department of Biotechnology; New Delhi; November 10, 2014). Sunil Abraham was unable to participate because of technical problems.
Ground Zero Summit 2014 (Organized by India Infosec Consortium; November 13-14, 2014). Geetha Hariharan participated in this event.
Privacy, security and surveillance: tackling international dilemmas and dangers in the digital realm (Organized by Wilton Park; November 17-19, 2014). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist in the session "Beyond the familiar: how do other countries deal with security and surveillance oversight?"

►Free Speech

Under a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, CIS is doing research on the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government and contribute studies, reports and policy briefs to feed into the ongoing debates at the national as well as international level. As part of the project we bring you the following outputs:

Blog Entries

Good Intentions, Recalcitrant Text - II: What India's ITU Proposal May Mean for Internet Governance (Geetha Hariharan; November 1, 2014).
India's Statement at ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, 2014 (Geetha Hariharan; November 4, 2014).

Newspaper Article

The Socratic debate: Whose internet is it anyway? (Pranesh Prakash; Economic Times; November 18, 2014).

News & Media Coverage
CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Twitter users find several accounts suspended for unknown reasons (Vasudha Venugopal; Economic Times; November 2, 2014).
Several Indian Twitter users' accounts suspended due to tech glitch (Silky Malhotra; digit; November 3, 2014).
Game release cancelled over gay character (Jaison Lewis; Mumbai Mirror; November 19, 2014).
Leave the Net Alone (Businessworld; November 25, 2014).

Digital Humanities

CIS is building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia:

Blog Entry

Mapping Digital Humanities in India - Concluding Thoughts (P.P.Sneha; November 30, 2014).

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration:

We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, atsunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director - Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/november-2014-bulletin

November 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-01-04T04:38:08Z

Our newsletter for the month of November 2013 can be accessed below.

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) welcomes you to the eleventh issue of its newsletter (November) for the year 2013:

Highlights

CIS is pleased to announce the second "Institute on Internet and Society" to be held in Yashada, Pune from February 11 to 17, 2014. Any members from the civil society (students, research scholars, academicians, scientists, legal professionals, etc.) who engage in issues concerning Internet and Society are encouraged to apply.
The National Resource Kit team is pleased to bring you its research for the states of Tripura, Nagaland and Chattisgarh.
CIS-A2K team signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Christ University in Bangalore to introduce Wikipedia in classrooms.
The Access to Knowledge narrative report capturing the work done by CIS-A2K team in the first ten months of the grant along with its strategy for the next 1 year is published.
Last month we organised the Seventh Privacy Round-table in collaboration with FICCI, DSCI, and Privacy International in Delhi. The developments are captured in a report by Elonnai Hickok.
Along with Wikimedia India and Acharya Narendra Dev College, we organised the Relaunch of Creative Commons in India. Dr. Shashi Tharoor was the chief guest.

Accessibility and Inclusion

As part of our project (under a grant from the Hans Foundation) on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India, we bring you draft chapters for the states of Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, and the union territory of Daman and Diu. With this we have completed compilation of draft chapters for 27 states and 5 union territories. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the following chapters:

► National Resource Kit Chapter

The Tripura Chapter (by CLPR, November 13, 2013): http://bit.ly/1bCFPwq.
The Nagaland Chapter (by CLPR, November 13, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cmKzq0.
The Chattisgarh Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, November 30, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cSczSt.

Note: All of these are early drafts and will be reviewed and updated.

► Other Accessibility Update

# Events Participated In

E-Accessibility Workshop 2013 (organised by Directorate of Information Technology, Government of Maharashtra, Mahaonline Limited and National Internet Exchange of India, November 19-20, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cQ0wd8. CIS was one of the trainer organisations for the event.
National Conference on Harnessing Technology for the Empowerment for Persons with Visual Impairments (organized by NAB Centre for Blind Women & Disability Studies, Indian Islamic Cultural Centre, New Delhi, November 19, 2013). Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan participated as a speaker: http://bit.ly/IzLOty.

Access to Knowledge

The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers and human rights, and critically examines Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, and Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software.

The following has been done under grant from the Wikimedia Foundation (http://bit.ly/SPqFOl). As part this project (http://bit.ly/X80ELd), we held 8 workshops, signed a MoU with Christ University for teaching Wikipedia to students, published a detailed narrative report of activities done during the initial period of the Wikimedia grant.

►Wikipedia

# Articles

ಅಂತರ್ಜಾಲದಲ್ಲಿ ನೆಟ್ಟ ಸಸಿಗೆ ಈಗ ಹತ್ತು ವರ್ಷ (by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Kannada Prabha, November 1, 2013): http://bit.ly/17LOw4O. The article highlights 10 years of Kannada Wikipedia, the current status of the Kannada Wikipedia vis-a-vis number of articles, number of editors, active editors, and page views per month.
Train The Trainer Programme for Wikipedians (by Subhashish Panigrahi, DNA, November 14, 2013): http://bit.ly/1ehr8kz. The article was edited by Rohini Lakshane of DNA.

# Announcement

CIS Signs MoU with Christ University, Bangalore (November 20, 2013): The Access to Knowledge team signed a MoU as part of which CIS-A2K and Christ University will impart Wikipedia education in Indian classrooms: http://bit.ly/1ehr8kz.

# Report

CIS-A2K Narrative Report (September 2012 – June 2013) (by T. Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi, November 29, 2013): http://bit.ly/1dFyjpO. The report throws some light on the CIS-A2K program strategy in the next one year.

# Blog Entries

Note: A couple of the below blog entries were carried in the Access to Knowledge newsletter last month.

Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project (by Nitika Tandon, November 13, 2013): http://bit.ly/1dodyuK.
Konkani Vishwakosh Under CC-BY-SA (by Nitika Tandon, November 13, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cm9wBH.
Train the Trainer Program (by Subhashish Panigrahi, November 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/18hjw0n.

# Event Co-organised

The Relaunch of Creative Commons India (co-organised by Wikimedia India, Acharya Narendra Dev College and CIS, India Islamic Cultural Centre, November 12, 2013): http://bit.ly/HPxrAO. Dr. Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for Human Resource Development was the chief guest at the event.

# Events Organised

Wikipedia Orientation Programme for MA Students (Christ University, Bangalore, November 12, 2013): http://bit.ly/ItxAtu. Syed Muzammiluddin was the trainer. Twenty students participated.
Wikipedia Orientation Programme for the Second Language Students (Christ University, Bangalore, November 12, 13, 16 and 19, 2013): http://bit.ly/1bxsOYF. T. Vishnu Vardhan, Syed Muzammiluddin and Dr. U.B.Pavanaja were the trainers. About 1200 second language students participated in the programme.
Documentation and Wikipedia Contribution — A One Day Workshop (Kalinga Institute of Social Studies, Bhubaneswar, November 14, 2013). The workshop was conducted by Subhashish Panigrahi: http://bit.ly/1fSvl1v.
Documentation and Wikipedia Workshop (Kalinga School of Management, Bhubaneswar, November 16, 2013): http://bit.ly/Imf0DV. Subhashish Panigrahi conducted the workshop.
Konknni Wikipedia Workshop (organised by Dalgado Konknni Akademi and CIS-A2K, Goa Central State Library, November 16 and 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/1fSwiH5.
Tenth Anniversary of Wikipedia (H N Multimedia Hall, National College, Basavanagudi, Bangalore, November 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/1eJ6da9. Dr. U R Ananthamurthy, Prof. G. Venkatasubbiah and Ravi Hegde were the guests of honour. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
First Phase of Odia Wikipedia Workshop (Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Bhubaneswar, November 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/18doDer. Subhashish Panigrahi conducted the workshop.
Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa, November 19, 2013): http://bit.ly/1fSAUwT. Nitika Tandon conducted the event.

# Event Participated In

Wikimedia Diversity Conference (organized by German Wikipedia Community, GLS Campus, Berlin): http://bit.ly/Ixr9W8.

# Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs for the following media coverage:

Kannada Wikipedia and its Tenth Anniversary (RadioCity, November 2, 2013): http://bit.ly/1dHEwBI.
10th anniversary of Kannada wikipedia (The Times of India, November 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/IxqDr7.
Tenth Anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia (Udayavani, November 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/1aFwqF1.
ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕೆ ಈಗ ದಶಮಾನೋತ್ಸವ. ಅದರ ಪ್ರಯುಕ್ತ ಒಂದು ಆಚರಣೆ (Avadhi Website, November 16, 2013): http://bit.ly/ImiBSy.
ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಗೆ 10, ಬೆಳವಣಿಗೆ ಸಾಲದು : ಪ್ರೊ .ಜಿವಿ (OneindiaKannada, November 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/1fSAUwT.
Tenth Anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia (Vijayavani, November 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/1b7exSa.
ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಕ್ಕೆ ದಶಮಾನೋತ್ಸವ ಸಂಭ್ರಮ (Prajavani, November 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/1hWtt9v.
ಕನ್ನಡದ ಆನ್‌ಲೈನ್ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ ದುರ್ಬಲ (Vijaya Karnataka, November 19, 2013): http://bit.ly/1hWtsCy.
Panaji: DKA organizes two day Konkani Wikipedia workshop (Daijiworld, November 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/1inoi03.

Note: The following are not a part of the Wikimedia Grant:

► Other

# Blog Entries

History of Creative Commons in India (by Priyank Dwivedi, November 13, 2013): http://bit.ly/17txcH7.
How Can We Make Open Education Truly Open? (by Dr. Nishant Shah, DML Central, November 22, 2013): http://bit.ly/1ezsAyj.

# Events Participated In

Conference on e-Governance for India: Opportunities, Challenges and Policy Alternatives (organised by OECD Korea Policy Centre in partnership with the Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad, November 6-7, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cGP13c. Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session on OECD Principles on eGovernment and their applicability to the developing world and India.
Indo-European Conference on the Role of the Patent System in Fostering Innovation and Technology Transfer (organized by European Patent Office, FICCI and European Business & Technology Centre, November 29, 2013, New Delhi). Nehaa Chaudhari participated in this conference.

Internet Governance

CIS is doing a project (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) on conducting research on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). So far we have organised seven privacy round-tables and drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill. This month we bring you a report from the seventh privacy round-table held in Delhi, and an analysis on why Facebook is more dangerous than government spying. As part of its project (funded by Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and support from the IDRC) on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia we did an interview with Namita A Malhotra, a researcher and lawyer from Alternative Law Forum. With this we have completed a total of 12 video interviews:

►Privacy

# Event Report

Seventh Privacy Round-table (organised by FICCI, DSCI, Privacy International and CIS, October 19, 2013): http://bit.ly/187pFOO. The report was published in the month of November.

# Newspaper Columns

Open Secrets (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, October 27, 2013): http://bit.ly/1b5uvK0.
I Just Pinged to Say Hello (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, November 24, 2013): http://bit.ly/183H34t.

# Blog Entries

An Interview with Caspar Bowden (by Maria Xynou, November 6, 2013): http://bit.ly/17LQqFX.
India's Response to WGEC Questionnaire (by Snehashish Ghosh, November 13, 2013): http://bit.ly/HX0r96.
Why 'Facebook' is More Dangerous than the Government Spying on You (by Maria Xynou, November 19, 2013): http://bit.ly/HWLFzi.
CIS Supports the UN Resolution on “The Right to Privacy in the Digital age” (by Elonnai Hickok, November 30, 2013): http://bit.ly/1c2A89q.

# Events Organised

IDEX Impact Assessment Workshop (organised by IDEX, CIS, Bangalore, November 16, 2013): http://bit.ly/1bxRfFm.
The Evolving Cyber Threat and How to Address It (CIS, Bangalore, November 22, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cEkUZY.
Panel on Privacy, Surveillance & the UID in the post-Snowden era (Institution of Agricultural Technologists, Bangalore, November 30, 2013): http://bit.ly/1ctSHW3.

# Events Participated In

Chances and Risks of Social Participation (organised by Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society and Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Berlin, November 22, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah gave the keynote: http://bit.ly/18PcMXN.
Expert Committee Meeting on Human DNA Profiling Bill (organised by the Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India, New Delhi). Sunil Abraham participated in the meeting: http://bit.ly/19CpDbD.

# Upcoming Event

Big Democracy: Big Surveillance - A Talk by Maria Xynou (CIS, Bangalore, December 3, 2013): http://bit.ly/1j4mzgu.

► Cyber Security

Laird Brown, a strategic planner and writer with core competencies on brand analysis, public relations and resource management and Purba Sarkar who in the past worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail are working in this project:

# Video Interview

Part 12: An Interview with Namita A. Malhotra (November 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/1j8MCjN.

# Documentary Film

First Look: Cyber Security Film (by Purba Sarkar, November 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/1alHhVu. The trailer was presented by Laird Brown recently at the IGF.

# Upcoming Event

DesiSec: Episode 1 - Film Release and Screening (December 11, 2013): Screening of the first documentary film on cyber security in India.

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

EC guidelines on social media: Welcome move, but not enough (by Shruti Dhapola, FirstPost, November 1, 2013): http://bit.ly/1c3fNkt.
NSA leaks helping India become 'Big Brother' state? (British Broadcasting Corporation, November 1, 2013): http://bit.ly/1b7ftDG.
Spy agencies, IB and RAW, put spanner in proposed privacy law (by Nagender Sharma and Aloke Tikku, Hindustan Times, November 2, 2013): http://bit.ly/1aox4HP.
India must support UN's e-snooping move: Human rights activists (by Indu Nandakumar, Economic Times, November 11, 2013): http://bit.ly/18LrI5s.
Social media promotions can backfire, too (by Ratna Bhushan and Varuni Khosla, The Times of India, November 11, 2013): http://bit.ly/1gMj7rg.
YouTube is the answer to what has changed in India (by Moulishree Srivastava, Livemint, November 20, 2013): http://bit.ly/1fg214A.
When the virtual world wakes up the real one (by Malini Nair, November 24, 2013): http://bit.ly/1hovyd3.

Digital Natives

CIS is doing a research project titled “Making Change”. The project will explore new ways of defining, locating, and understanding change in network societies. Having the thought piece 'Whose Change is it Anyway' as an entry point for discussion and reflection, the project will feature profiles, interviews and responses of change-makers to questions around current mechanisms and practices of change in South Asia and South East Asia.:

► Making Change

# Blog Entries

Methods to Conceive and Condense Social Change (by Denisse Albornoz, November 30, 2013): http://bit.ly/1ezrBhw.
Blank Noise and the Active Citizen Dissonance (by Denisse Albornoz, November 30, 2013): http://bit.ly/IwOHu9.

► Other

# Blog Entry

Digitally Enhanced Civil Resistance (by Denisse Albornoz, November 20, 2013): http://bit.ly/18ndc7p.

Telecom

Shyam Ponappa, a Distinguished Fellow at CIS is a regular columnist with the Business Standard. The articles published on his blog Organizing India Blogspot is mirrored on our website:

► Newspaper Column

Predictability in Infrastructure (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, November 6, 2013 and Observer India Blogspot, November 10, 2013): http://bit.ly/1dLZ0Fp.

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access

CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation is executing a project to create a knowledge repository on Internet and society. This repository will comprise content targeted primarily at civil society with a view to enabling their informed participation in the Indian Internet and ICT policy space. The repository is available at the Internet Institute website: http://bit.ly/1iQT2UB.

►Upcoming Event

Institute on Internet and Society (organised by Ford Foundation and CIS, Yashada, Pune, February 11-17, 2014): http://bit.ly/180mQi9. The application form is available at http://internet-institute.in/form. Registrations close on December 15, 2013.

► Modules

Internet Engineering Task Force (by Anirudh Sridhar, November 30, 2013). The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is an open standards body with no requirements for membership and does not have a formal membership process either: http://bit.ly/1c4aOQr.
World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) (by Anirudh Sridhar, November 30, 2013). The World Summit on Information Society was first proposed by the International Telecommunication Union in 1998. The main focus of the WSIS was to address issues related to the global digital divide. However, the scope of the WSIS was broadened later to include internet related public policy issues: http://bit.ly/186dbnV.

Digital Humanities

► Event Participated In

From Seemingly Transparent to Definitely Opaque (organised by University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, November 4-7, 2013): http://bit.ly/19b6IW1. Nishant Shah taught this course and also presented on a panel on 'Secrets of Digital Culture'.

About CIS

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration:

We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/november-2013-bulletin

November 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-01-06T13:59:11Z

Welcome to the newsletter of November 2012 from the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). The present issue features an analysis of Section 66A of the IT Act by Pranesh Prakash, comments on the draft Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, an introduction to 12 mobile devices that we are researching as part of the Pervasive Technologies project, submissions of civil society in relation to the revision of International Telecommunication Regulations that are to take place at the ITU's World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, updates from the Wikipedia community on Indic languages, and news and media coverage.

Jobs

CIS is seeking applications for the posts of Research Manager and Programme Officer – Internet Governance. To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org.

Accessibility
India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies:
Blog Entry Human Machine Interfaces: The History of an Uncertain Future (by Sharath Chandra Ram, November 30, 2012).
Event Participated Workshop on Making ICT and Mobile Phones Accessible for Persons with Disabilities in Nepal (organised by ITU, November 9, 2012). Nirmita Narasimhan was a speaker in the session "Introduction: ICT and Telecom Accessibility, Good Practices in Policy and Industry Initiatives".
Access to Knowledge
The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge:
WIPO Transcripts We are providing archival copies of the transcripts of the 25th session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights held in Geneva from November 19 to 23, 2012: WIPO SCCR 25 Day 1, November 19, 2012 WIPO SCCR 25 Day 2, November 20, 2012 WIPO SCCR 25 Day 3, November 21, 2012 WIPO SCCR 25 Day 4, November 22, 2012 WIPO SCCR 25 Day 5, November 23, 2012
Comments Comments on the Broadcast Treaty and Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives (by Smitha Krishna Prasad, November 29, 2012). Comments on the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (Draft) (by Snehashish Ghosh, submitted to the Ministry of Science and Technology, November 26, 2012).
Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace As a part of the Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace research project, CIS is researching upon 12 gray-market mobile devices to generate a better understanding of the intellectual property implications of the pervasive mobile technologies available in the Indian market: Workshop Report Exploring the Internals of Mobile Devices — Report from a One-day Workshop at TERI (by Jadine Lannon, November 30, 2012).
Blog Entries ICOMM2012: International Communications and Electronics Fair (by Jadine Lannon, November 14, 2012). Pervasive Mobile Technologies: Meet Our Mobile Devices! (by Jadine Lannon, November 30, 2012).
Upcoming Event 2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (FGV Law School, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, December 15 – 17, 2012).
Openness The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:
Event Organised Autonomy, Access, Infrastructure and Future — A Discussion with C S Lakshmi (CIS, Bangalore, November 29, 2012). A video of the event is published. Art in the Open Source Age — A Talk by Gene Kogan (CIS, Bangalore, November 30, 2012).
Blog Entry Open Government Platform (by Neeta Verma, Alka Mishra and D.P. Mishra, Informatics Magazine, July 2012).
Event Participated Science Gallery Workshop @ Srishti (organised by Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology and Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin, Srishti School of Art Design and Technology (N2 campus), Bangalore, November 23, 2012). Sunil Abraham participated in this event.
Access to Knowledge Programme Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of three members based in Delhi: Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval. Program Manager, Shiju Alex left the organisation. November 16, 2012 was his last working day.
Events Organised Kolkata: Tasting the Sweetness of Wikipedia! (Kolkata, November 3, 2012). First Odia Wikipedia Education Program (Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal, November 8, 2012). Odia Wikipedia Workshop at AML (Academy of Media Learning, Bhubaneswar, November 10, 2012). A Wikipedia Mini-hackathon in Delhi (CIS, New Delhi, November 11, 2012). Wikipedia: State of Tech — A Talk by Erik Moeller (CIS, Bangalore, November 12, 2012). An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at KMBB (KMBB College, Bhubaneswar, November 19, 2012). Follow up to Wikipedia Introductory Session (Bharati Vidyapeeth, Delhi, November 19, 2012).
Events Participated Wikipedia Hackathon (organised by BITS, Hyderabad, October 25 – 27, 2012). Wikipedia Women's Workshop in Mumbai (by Noopur Raval, Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Wadala, Mumbai, November 4, 2012).
News and Media Coverage ‘Some Indian laws could be challenging’ (Bangalore Mirror, November 15, 2012). A Report of the Odia Wikipedia Workshop held in KMBB College of Engineering, Bhubaneswar (Sambad, November 19, 2012). OdishaDiary conferred prestigious Odisha Youth Inspiration Award 2012 to Odia Wikipedia team (Orissa Diary, November 23, 2012). વિકિપીડિયા ગુજરાતી માં પણ છે (by Harish Kothari, Cybersafar, November 28, 2012).
Blog Entry Typing in Indic Languages from Mobiles made Easy! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, November 19, 2012).
HasGeek HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the Fifth Elephant, Droidcon India 2011, Android Camp, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works out from CIS office in Bengaluru. The following event was organised by HasGeek in the month of November: Droidcon India (November 2 and 3, 2012, MLR Convention Centre, Whitefield, Bangalore).
Internet Governance The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes:
Analysis of IT Act Breaking Down Section 66A of the IT Act (by Pranesh Prakash, November 25, 2012). Fixing India’s anarchic IT Act (by Pranesh Prakash, Livemint, November 28, 2012). Draft nonsense (by Pranesh Prakash, The Times of India, November 24, 2012).
Analysis of Justice AP Shah Report Q&A to the Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy (by Elonnai Hickok, November 9, 2012).
Comments / Submissions to ITU Statement of Civil Society Members in the "Best Bits" pre-IGF Meeting. CIS was one of the signatories of this submission made to the ITU. Submission on India's Draft Comments on Proposed Changes to the ITU's ITRs. CIS was one of the signatories along with Society for Knowledge Commons, Delhi Science Forum, Free Software Movement of India, Internet Democracy Project and Media for Change. Submission by Indian Civil Society Organisations on Future ITRs and Related Processes. CIS was one of the signatories of this submission in response to ITU’s call for public comments. Indian Government's Submission to ITU: We have put up the text of the submission made by the Government of India to the World Conference of International Telecommunications, Dubai on November 3, 2012.
Event Participated India Internet Governance Conference (organised by the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, FICCI and Internet Society, October 4 -5, 2012). Pranesh Prakash made a presentation. CIS was one of the supporting organisations.
Blog Entries Arbitrary Arrests for Comment on Bal Thackeray's Death (by Pranesh Prakash, November 19, 2012). This was re-posted in Outlook (November 19, 2012), KAFILA (November 19, 2012), and Shail's Nest (November 20, 2012). DoT Blocks Domain Sites — But Reasons and Authority Unclear (by Smitha Krishna Prasad, November 21, 2012).
Upcoming Events Technology Culture and Events in South East Asia — A Presentation by Preetam Rai(CIS, Bangalore, Near Domlur Club and TERI Complex, December 18, 2012, 5.00 p.m. to 6.30 p.m.). DML Conference 2013 (Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2012).
Internet Governance Forum Pranesh Prakash, Chinmayi Arun, Malavika Jayaram and Elonnai Hickok participated in the Internet Governance Forum held in Baku, Azerbaijan in the month of November 2012. In total, CIS spoke in 12 panels: Best Bits 2012 (organised by Best Bits, Baku, Azerbaijan November 3 and 4, 2012). Pranesh Prakash and Elonnai Hickok participated in this event. The Privatisation of Censorship: The Online Responsibility to Protect Free Expression (organized by Index on Censorship, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 5, 2012). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist. New Trends in Industry Self-Governance (organised by Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK and Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ, University of Zurich, Switzerland and Nominet, UK, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 7, 2012 from 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist. Civil Rights in the Digital Age, about the Impact the Internet has on Civil Rights (organised by ECP on behalf of the IGF-NL, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 7, 2012, 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m.). Malavika Jayaram was a panelist. Solutions for Enabling Cross-border Data Flows (co-organised by ICC BASIS and the Internet Society, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 7, 2012). Cloudy Jurisdiction: Addressing the thirst for Cloud Data in Domestic Legeal Processes (co-organised by Electronic Frontier Foundation (Peru) and University of Ottawa, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 7, 2012). What Frameworks for Cross-Border Online Communities and Services (hosted by the Internet & Jurisdiction Project, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 8, 2012). Chinmayi Arun was a panelist. Governing Identity on the Internet (co-organised by Brenden Kuerbis, Citizen Lab and Christine Runnegar, Internet Society, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 8, 2012, 11.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.). Malavika Jayaram was a panelist. Law Enforcement via Domain Names: Caveats to DNS Neutrality (organised by Hong Xue, Vivekanandan, Wei Mao and Leo Liu, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 8, 2012). Chinmayi Arun was a panelist. Who is Following Me: Tracking the Trackers (organised by Internet Society and the Council of Europe, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 8, 2012). Malavika Jayaram was a speaker at this event. National IG Mechanisms – Looking at Some Key Design Issues (Baku, Azerbaijan, November 8, 2012). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist. Steady Steps.....FOSS and the MDG's (organised by International Center For Free and Open Source Software and Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 8, 2012). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
Event Participated Privacy in the Social Networked World (hosted by the Centre for Business Information Ethics, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan, on behalf of the Asian Privacy Scholars Network, November 19 – 20, 2012). Elonnai Hickok spoke on Transparency and Privacy in India.
Featured in the Media Power to youth (The Hindustan Times, November 3, 2012). The article names Sunil Abraham and Lawrence Liang as some of the young people who are shaping the future. 25 Indians to watch (FT Magazine, November 16, 2012). Sunil Abraham is one among the 25 rising Indian stars to watch out for. Malavika Jayaram named a top lawyer for Internet and e-Commerce in India (WHO’s WHO LEGAL, November 20, 2012).
Media Coverage Information security policy on govt agenda (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, November 6, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted. Law yet to catch up with tech-enabled peeping toms (by Sandhya Soman & Pratiksha Ramkumar, Times of India, November 7, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted. India second in requesting user info: Google (by Karthik Subramaniam, Hindu, November 14, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Post and be Damned (by Kavita Shanmugham, November 14, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. India second in keeping tabs on netizens (by Ishan Srivastava, The Times of India, November 15, 2012). India ranks second globally in accessing private details of users (thinkdigit, November 15, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Google's 'Transparency Report' sketchy, inconclusive: Government (by Indu Nandakumar, Economic Times, November 17, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Women Arrested in Mumbai for Complaining on Facebook (by Neha Thirani and Hari Kumar, New York Times, November 19, 2012). Girls arrested for Facebook post on Thackeray get bail (FirstPost, November 19, 2012). Arrest of girl over Thackeray FB update a clear misuse of Sec 295A (FirstPost, November 19, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. How to Steer Clear of India’s Strict Internet Laws (by Sangeeta Rajesh and Heather Timmons, New York Times, November 20, 2012). Internet users flay Mumbai girls' arrest over Facebook post (IBN Live, November 20, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Arrests over Facebook posts: Why we’re on a dangerous slide (Venky Vembu, FirstPost, November 20, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Girl's arrest draws flak on social media (The Times of India, November 20, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. India's Shame: World Reacts to FB Post Arrest (by Sonal Bhadoria, India Times, November 21, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Indian government at second position after U.S.A for demanding user data from Google (WHDI Reviews, November 22, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Indians Rank Second For Online Snooping (Indolink, November 23, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Civil society & industry oppose India’s plans to modify ITRs (by Shalini Singh, The Hindu, November 23, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted. Amnesty International calls for review of 66A of IT act (by Nirmalya Behera, Business Standard, November 28, 2012). Thousands go online against 66A (by Apoorva Dutt, DNA, November 29, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. The flaw in cyber law (by S Ronendra Singh, Hindu Business Line, November 29, 2012). Sunil Abraham and Snehashish Ghosh are quoted. Govt tweaks enforcement of IT Act after spate of arrests (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, November 29, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Yes, You Can Get Arrested for a Facebook Status Update Now (by David Wagner, Atlantic Wire, November 29, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. The real Sibal’s law: Resisting Section 66A is futile (by Lakshmi Chaudhry, FirstPost, November 30, 2012). Pranesh Prakash’s blog post on section 66A which was also published in Outlook is quoted.
Videos Women arrested for Facebook post: Did cops act under Sena pressure? (NDTV, November 19, 2012). YP Singh, Alyque Padamsee, Rohan Joshi, Karuna Nundy and Pranesh Prakash took part in a discussion about the arrest of two girls over a Facebook comment. The Last Word: Is there a need to review Information Technology Act? (CNN-IBN, November 20, 2012). Aryaman Sundaram, Pavan Duggal, Pranesh Prakash and Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad took part in a discussion with Karan Thapar on section 66A of the IT Act. Interview with Pranesh Prakash (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, November 30, 2012).
Telecom While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum:
Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India Ford Foundation has given a grant of USD 2,00,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. The knowledge repository deals with these modules: Introduction to Telecommunications, Telecommunications Infrastructure and Technologies, Government of India Regulatory Framework for Telecom, Telecommunication and the Market, Universal Access and Accessibility, The International Telecommunications Union and other international bodies, Broadcasting, Emerging Topics and Way Forward. Dr. Surendra Pal, Satya N Gupta, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Payal Malik, Dr. Rakesh Mehrotra and Dr. Nadeem Akhtar are the expert reviewers.
The following are the new outputs: DoT — Its Powers and Responsibilities (by Snehashish Ghosh, November 30, 2012). Government Policy and Guidelines (by Snehashish Ghosh, November 30, 2012). TRAI Regulations (by Snehashish Ghosh, November 30, 2012). TRAI Telecommunication Tariff Orders (by Snehashish Ghosh, November 30, 2012).
Newspaper Columns Super WiFi & Shared Spectrum: A Time to Start Sharing (by Shyam Ponappa, Organizing India Blogspot on November 3, 2012 and Business Standard, November 1, 2012). Folly of Mandating Spectrum Auctions (by Jayna Kothari, Hindu Business Line, November 24, 2012).
Event Participated 2nd MPL Faculty Workshop (North Zone) on Teaching Public Policy, Media and Law (Central University, Rajasthan, November 1-2, 2012). Snehashish Ghosh made a presentation on "Building a Telecom Knowledge Repository."
Digital Natives Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:
Interview Whose Change Is It Anyway? \| DML2013: As a preparation for the DML conference, Nishant Shah had an interview with Howard Rheingold, a cyberculture pioneer, social media innovator, and author of "Smart Mobs. Watch the video on YouTube.
About CIS CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. The policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos, etc. We conducted policy research for the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, NIA Bill, etc. CIS is accredited as an observer at WIPO, and has given policy briefs to delegations from various countries, our Programme Manager, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.
Follow us elsewhere Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter Join the CIS group on Facebook Visit us at http://cis-india.org
Support Us Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.
Request for Collaboration We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/november-2012-bulletin

November 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-24T02:37:09Z

Welcome to the Centre for Internet and Society newsletter! In this issue we bring you the updates of our research, events, media coverage and videos of some past events organized by us during the month of November 2011.

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:

Key Research

On Fooling Around: Digital Natives and Politics in Asia
by Nishant Shah, Director-Research
Youths are not only actively participating in the politics of its times but also changing the way in which we understand the political processes of mobilisation, participation and transformation, writes Nishant. The paper was presented at the Digital Cultures in Asia conference at the Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.

Links in the Chain

Analog Relics in the Digital Age, volume 8, issue 4
Guest Editor: Nilofar Ansher
“The scale of inventions has not really leaped, so much as mutated. We had Twitter and Facebook ... (remember notice boards, community centers and pamphlets); they just weren’t so instant, hyperlinked and global in scale. We still use the medium of a mouthpiece and speaker to talk to each other long distance, the difference is in the changed aesthetics of the 21st century – it’s all squarish curves and scratch-proof glass that are more appealing today. Blackboards, writing material, listening devices and memory aids have undergone unprecedented transformations of function and usage, but it’s still about having a blank canvas to write upon with a chalk, pen, paper or iClick”, writes Nilofar in this issue of the Digital Natives newsletter.

Articles/Columns

In Search of the Other: Decoding Digital Natives: Nishant Shah charts the trajectories of our research at the Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore, India) and Hivos (The Hague, The Netherlands) to see how alternative models of understanding these relationships can be built. This blog post by Nishant Shah was published in DML central on 24 October 2011.

Staff Quoted in the Media

The Write Stuff, Deccan Chronicle, 14 November 2011. Nishant Shah has been quoted in this article.

Pathways for Learning in Higher Education

The Pathways Project for Learning in Higher Education is a collaboration between the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). The project is supported by the Ford Foundation and works with disadvantaged students in 9 undergraduate colleges in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala, to explore relationships between Technologies, Higher Education and the new forms of social justice in India.

Article Published by the Media

Learn it Yourself: The peer-to-peer world of online learning encourages conversations and reciprocal learning, writes Nishant Shah. The article was published by the Indian Express on 30 October 2011.

Video of Event Participated

Mobility Shifts 2011 — An International Future of Learning Summit: The summit was organised by the New School and sponsored by MacArthur Foundation and Mozilla. It was held from October 10 to October 16, 2011 at the New School, New York City. Nishant Shah participated in the summit and spoke on Digital Outcasts: Social Justice, Technology and Learning in India. The video of the event is online.

Accessibility

Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.

Publication

e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities (Russian Version)
Edited by Nirmita Narasimhan
The e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities is now available in Russian. The handbook is a joint publication of ITU, G3ict and the Centre for Internet and Society, in cooperation with the Hans Foundation. Dr. Hamadoun I. Toure, Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union wrote the preface. Dr. Sami Al-Basheer, Director, ITU-D wrote the introduction and Axel Leblois, Executive Director, G3ict wrote the foreword.

Blog Post

The case for Accessible Banking by Dinesh Kaushal.

Access to Knowledge

The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge:

Key Research

Of Jesters, Clowns and Pranksters: YouTube and the Condition of Collaborative Authorship
by Nishant Shah, Director-Research, Centre for Internet and Society
The idea of a single author creating cinematic objects in a well-controlled scheme of support system and production/distribution infrastructure has been fundamentally challenged by the emergence of digital video sharing sites like YouTube, writes Nishant Shah in this essay published in the Journal of Moving Images.

Blog Posts

CIS Hosts Scanned Version of George Orwell’s Books vs. Cigarettes

Comments / Statement

CIS Intervention on Future Work of the WIPO Advisory Committee on Enforcement: The seventh session of the World Intellectual Property Organization's Advisory Committee on Enforcement (ACE) is being held in Geneva on November 30 and December 1, 2011. Pranesh Prakash intervened during the discussion of future work of the ACE with this comment.
Comment by CIS at ACE on Presentation on French Charter on the Fight against Cyber-Counterfeiting: The seventh session of the World Intellectual Property Organization's Advisory Committee on Enforcement is being held in Geneva on November 30 and December 1, 2011. Pranesh Prakash responded to a presentation by Prof. Pierre Sirinelli of the École de droit de la Sorbonne, Université Paris 1 on 'The French Charter on the Fight against Cyber-Counterfeiting of December 16, 2009' with this comment.
Statement of CIS on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty at the 23rd SCCR: The twenty-third session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is being held in Geneva from November 22, 2011 to December 2, 2011. Pranesh Prakash delivered this statement on a new proposal made by South Africa and Mexico (SCCR/23/6) on a treaty for broadcasters.

Openness

The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Content, Open Standards, Open Access to Law, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:

Featured Research

Know Your Users, Match their Needs!
As Free Access to Law initiatives in the Global South enter into a new stage of maturity, they must be certain not to lose sight of their users’ needs. This blog post gives a summary of the “Good Practices Handbook”, a research output of the collaborative project Free Access to Law — Is it Here to Stay? undertaken by LexUM (Canada) and the South African Legal Institute in partnership with the Centre for Internet and Society. Rebecca Schild and Prashant Iyengar from CIS were part of the research team.

Event Organised

Open Access to Academic Knowledge, organised by the Indian Institute of Science and CIS at National Centre for Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore on 2 November 2011. Tom Dane participated in this event.

Event Participated

3rd Canadian Science Policy Conference, organised by Canadian Science Policy Conference from16 to 18 November 2011 at the Ottawa Convention Centre. Sunil Abraham spoke in the session on Global Implications of Open and Inclusive Innovation.

Announcement

The Wikimedia India Program Trust. A new entity, the “Wikimedia India Program Trust”, has been registered in Delhi. Sunil Abraham is one of the trustees.

Internet Governance

The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes:

Comments / Submissions

CIS Comments on Finance Committee Statements to Open Letters on Unique Identity: The Parliamentary Finance Committee responded to the six open letters sent by CIS through an email on 12 October 2011. CIS has commented on the points raised by the Committee.
Comments on the National Policy of Information Technology: The NPIT 2011 has the laudable goal of making India a ‘knowledge economy with a global role’ by developing and deploying ICT solutions in all sectors to foster development within India and at a global level. CIS appreciates this initiative of the Department of Information Technology and offers brief comments to strengthen the draft.
CIS Comments on the Draft National Policy on Electronics: CIS submitted its comments to the request for comments put out by the Department of Information Technology on its draft 'National Policy on Electronics'.

Statement

India's Statement Proposing UN Committee for Internet-Related Policy: India made its statement at the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly, its proposal for the UN Committee for Internet-Related Policy was presented.

Podcast

Professor Balaram talks Open Access : Tom Dane spoke with Professor P Balaram, Director of the Indian Institute of Science about the Open Access movement. A podcast of the interview is online.

Event Report

The 2nd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series — A Post-event Report : The 2nd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series was organised by the Indian Journal of Law and Technology and CIS on the 21st and 22nd of May 2011 at the National Law School of India University, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore. The main theme for this year was Emerging Issues in Privacy Law: Law, Policy and Practice.

Essay in Peer Reviewed Journal

Material Cyborgs; Asserted Boundaries
by Nishant Shah, Director-Research
Nishant explores the possibility of formulating the cyborg as an author or translator who is able to navigate between the different binaries of ‘meat–machine’, ‘digital–physical’, and ‘body–self’, using the abilities and the capabilities learnt in one system in an efficient and effective understanding of the other. The essay was published in the European Journal of English Studies, Volume 12, Issue 2.

Articles/Columns

What is Dilligaf? On the web, time moves at the speed of thought: Groups emerge, proliferate and are abandoned as new trends and fads take precedence. Nowhere else is this dramatic flux as apparent as in the language that evolves online. While SMS lingo – like TTYL (Talk To You Later) and LOL (Laughing Out Loud)– has endured and become a part of everyday language, new forms of speech are taking over. This article by Nishant Shah was published in GQ India.
The Book of Jobs The man who made the computer personal, who changed the face of the digital media industry, who was inspired by Zen philosophy to create an eight-billion-dollar empire, Steve Jobs, died last month. Just a few weeks before his death, in the midst of his painful illness, he told Walter Isaacson, the man chosen to write his authorised biography, “I really want to believe that something survives”. And Isaacson wrote him a fairy tale which will make sure that Jobs will be remembered beyond the gizmos and gimmicks, writes Nishant Shah in this article published in the Indian Express on 12 November 2011.

Staff Quoted in the Media

Is Facebook tracking your virtual footprints? by Sheetal Sukhija in MidDay, 22 November 2011. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this article.
M-governance gains momentum by Vasudha Venugopal in the Hindu, 20 November 2011. Nishant Shah was quoted in this article.
SOPA: The bill that could kill the Internet by Suw Charman-Anderson in Firstpost.Technology, 16 November 2011.
Broadband user base still has a long way to go, by Leslie D’Monte & Deepti Chaudhary in Livemint, 15 November 2011. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this article.
‘Not mandatory’ but maids, guards get fingerprinted by Hemanth Kashyap in Bangalore Mirror, 9 November 2011. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this article.
Netizen Report: Transparency Edition by Rebecca MacKinnon in Global Voices Online, 7 November 2011.
Blocking online content: Google gets more requests than govt by Pallavi Polanki in Firstpost.com, 2 November 2011. Pranesh Prakash has been quoted in this article.

Blog Posts

Sources of CIS Funding by Pranesh Prakash on 9 November 2011.

TRAI urged to take action against P2P throttling and DNS hijacking by Anand on 9 November 2011.

Events Organised

Exposing Data: Art Slash Activism organised by Tactical Tech and CIS at CIS office in Bangalore on 28 November 2011. Ward Smith and Stephanie Hankey (Co-founders of TTC), Ayisha Abraham (Filmmaker, Srishti School of Art Design) and Zainab Bawa (Research Fellow, CIS) gave a lecture.

Droidcon India, first Android Conference in Bangalore, organised by CIS in collaboration with Droidcon.com, Bangalore Android User Group, MobileMonday Bangalore and Android Advices on 18 and 19 November 2011 at the MLR Convention Centre, Bangalore.

Events Participated

Western Ghats Portal: Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics organised by the Western Ghats Portal team at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment, 25 November 2011. Sunil Abraham spoke in the session on Scientific Commons and Policy.
Names Not Numbers Mumbai, 26 November 2011. Nishant Shah spoke in a panel on “The New Digital Individual: Is New Technology Liberating or Enslaving?”. The event was organised by Editorial Intelligence and partners which included the British Council and Financial Times, BBC World News, Mumbai first, Vodafone, Trident and Godrej India Cultural Lab.

Upcoming Events

Dialogue Cafe @ Centre for Internet and Society, 2 December 2011, Centre for Internet & Society, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The High Level Privacy Conclave, 3 February 2011, Paharpur Business Centre, Nehru Place Greens New Delhi, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. This is a closed-door meeting. For participation, get in touch with Elonnai (elonnai@cis-india.org).
All India Privacy Symposium, 4 February 2011, India International Centre, New Delhi. This is a public meeting. For participation, get in touch with Elonnai (elonnai@cis-india.org).

Video

Facebook Resistance Workshop at CIS. This was a workshop for people to learn on how to think beyond the rules and limitations of Facebook, to tweak and play around the features and design to generate useful, creative, and funny concepts and explore how this creative intervention can be turned into a real software developed by the Facebook Resistance.

Telecom

While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum:

Column

Telecom Path-Breaker? (by Shyam Ponappa): Does the draft National Telecom Policy-2011 reflect true brilliance or smoke-and-mirrors? It will be a game-changer if a shared network is implemented effectively, writes Shyam Ponappa in this article published in the Business Standard on 3 November 2011.

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook\
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/november-2011-bulletin

November 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-07T11:46:10Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society!

News Updates

The internet’s new billion: New web users — in countries like Brazil and China — are changing the culture of the internet.
http://bit.ly/hKUb5n

‘Piracy is now a mainstream political phenomenon': “Piracy has become a mainstream political phenomenon,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society in the city. The piracy that he was referring to was not the piracy of the high seas but the piracy of intellectual property.
http://bit.ly/gMC1Br

Open standards policy in India: A long, but successful journey: Last week, India became another major country to join the growing, global open standards movement. After three years of intense debate and discussion, India's Department of IT in India finalized its Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance, joining the ranks of emerging economies like Brazil, South Africa and others. This is a historic moment and India's Department of Information Technology (DIT) deserves congratulations for approving a policy that will ensure the long-term preservation of India's e-government data.
http://bit.ly/dGo6Qo

Information, the world's new capital - Digital Natives: Information is the new capital and currency of the world, Nishant Shah, of the India-based Digital Natives with a Cause, told Bizcommunity.com yesterday, 10 November 2010, as the three-day workshop on digital and internet technologies that brought together young delegates from nine African countries ended in Johannesburg, South Africa. "If the 20th century was the age of the industrial revolution, the 21st century is now actually the age of the knowledge information," Shah said.
http://bit.ly/dpXIKY

What it means to be a child today: They move seamlessly between reality and virtual reality. The digital landscape they inhabit comprises generations — not of family — but of technology such as Web 2.0, 3G, PS4 and iPhone5. Their world has moved beyond their neighbourhood, school and childhood friends to encompass a 500-channel television universe, the global gaming village, the endless internet. These are the children born in the last decade and half — possibly the first generation that has never known a world without hi-tech.
http://bit.ly/cz3nBJ

Report: Digitally Open: Innovation and Open Access Forum, 23 Oct 2010, Doha, Qatar: A summary of the event "Digitally Open: Innovation and Open Access Forum" held in Doha.
http://bit.ly/catHoi

DOC 2.0: A Resources Sharing Mela by NGO Documentation Centres: A Resource Sharing Mela and Meet of DCM (Document Centres Meet) at the Centre for Education & Documentation in Domlur, Bangalore.
http://bit.ly/dnwQMf

Wi-Fi Direct promises range, bandwidth higher than Bluetooth: Sharing, printing and connecting for Wi-Fi devices is going to be more convenient than ever with soon-to-be-launched technology Wi-Fi Direct, which enables devices to connect to each other without a conventional Wi-Fi hub. This article by Ramkumar Iyer was published in the Hindu on 31 October 2010.
http://bit.ly/aUul9f
Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property: Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property charts the rise of the access to knowledge movement, a movement in which Open Society Foundations have played a key role. It maps the vast terrain of legal, cultural, and technical issues that activists and thinkers aligned to the movement negotiate every day.
http://bit.ly/9nkQFM

Social Mashup!: Save the Date Join us to meet India’s most passionate, innovative, and curious start-up social entrepreneurs for two groundbreaking days of conversations, connections and inspiration. This event will be held on 2-3 December 2010 at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.
http://bit.ly/bKKcar

Digitally Open: Innovation and Open Access Forum: Promoting Openness in Today's Digital World
http://bit.ly/961Ieg

Crisis for identity or identity crisis?: The hurry with which the government is pushing its most ambitious project to assign a number (UID) to every citizen without any feasibility study or public debate has raised many questions. http://bit.ly/8Zt9mf

Upcoming Event

Identity, Identification and Media Representation in Video Game Play: An Audience Reception Study: Adrienne Shaw from the Annenberg School of communications, who is a visiting fellow at MICA is giving a public talk on research on representation in video games on 27 November 2010 at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore.
http://bit.ly/909xkU

Research

My Bubble, My Space, My Voice Workshop - Perspective and Future
The second workshop for the “Digital Natives with a Cause?” research project named “My Bubble, My Space, My Voice” took place at the Link Center of Wits University, in Johannesburg, South Africa from 6 November 2010 to 9 November 2010. Samuel Tettner, Digital Natives Co-cordinator shares his perspective on the workshop.
http://bit.ly/bPX6Xd

Archive and Access: Call for Review
The Archive and Access research project by Rochelle Pinto, Aparna Balachandran and Abhijit Bhattacharya is a part of the Researchers @ Work Programme at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. The project that attempts to look at the ways in which the notion of the archive, the role of the archivist and the relationship between the state and private archives that has undergone a transition with the emergence of Internet technologies in India has been put up for public review. http://bit.ly/d4o809

Just Where We Like It
The micro space for status updates might become the new public space for discussion. Nishant Shah's column on Digital Natives was published in the Sunday Eye of the Indian Express on 21 November 2010.
http://bit.ly/96cK8q

Taking It to the Streets
The previous posts in the Beyond the Digital series have discussed the distinct ways in which young people today are thinking about their activism. The fourth post elaborates further on how this is translated into practice by sharing the experience of a Blank Noise street intervention: Y ARE U LOOKING AT ME?
http://bit.ly/ciyiiR

Talking Back without "Talking Back"
The activism of digital natives is often considered different from previous generations because of the methods and tools they use. However, reflecting on my conversations with The Blank Noise Project and my experience in the ‘Digital Natives Talking Back’ workshop in Taipei, the difference goes beyond the method and can be spotted at the analytical level – how young people today are thinking about their activism.
http://bit.ly/bHAvDE

The 'Beyond the Digital' Directory
For the past few months, Maesy Angelina has been sharing the insights gained from her research with Blank Noise on the activism of digital natives. The ‘Beyond the Digital’ directory offers a list of the posts on the research based on the order of its publication.
http://bit.ly/b3TK3C

First Thing First
Studies often focus on how digital natives do their activism in identifying the characteristics of youth digital activism and dedicate little attention to what the activism is about. The second blog post in the Beyond the Digital series reverses this trend and explores how the Blank Noise Project articulates the issue it addresses: street sexual harassment.
http://bit.ly/cM1HFf

Change has come to all of us
The general focus on a digital generational divide makes us believe that generations are separated by the digital axis, and that the gap is widening. There is a growing anxiety voiced by an older generation that the digital natives they encounter — in their homes, schools and universities and at workplaces — are a new breed with an entirely different set of vocabularies and lifestyles which are unintelligible and inaccessible. It is time we started pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a digital native.
http://bit.ly/9J82YY

Accessibility

e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities
The Centre for Internet and Society is proud to announce the launch of its first publication, the “e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities" in collaboration with the G3ict (Global Initiative for Inclusive Information Communication Technologies) and ITU (International Telecommunications Union), and sponsored by the Hans Foundation. The handbook is compiled and edited by Nirmita Narasimhan. Dr. Hamadoun I. Toure, Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union has written the preface, Dr. Sami Al-Basheer, Director, ITU-D has written the introduction and Axel Leblois, Executive Director, G3ict has written the foreword.
http://bit.ly/gfKNYO

Intellectual Property

Statement of CIS on the Work of the Committee in the 21st SCCR
The twenty-first session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights was held in Geneva from 8 to 12 November 2010. Nirmita Narasimhan attended the conference and represented the Centre for Internet and Society.
http://bit.ly/fJVNPI

We’ve All Got Some Baggage
America’s newest trade agreement is not going to kill only iPods. The article appeared in the Tehelka Magazine Vol 7, Issue 45, Dated November 13, 2010
http://bit.ly/cVrpWd

Internet Governance

Consumer Privacy - How to Enforce an Effective Protective Regime?
In a typical sense, when people think of themselves as consumers, they just think about what they purchase, how they purchase and how they use their purchase. But while doing this exercise we are always exchanging personally identifiable information, and thus our privacy is always at risk. In this blog post, Elonnai Hickok and Prashant Iyengar through a series of questions look through the whole concept of consumer privacy at the national and international levels. By placing a special emphasis on Indian context, this post details the potential avenues of consumer privacy in India and states the important elements that should be kept in mind when trying to find at an effective protective regime for consumer privacy.
http://bit.ly/eEs5Qx

CIS Responds to Privacy Approach Paper
A group of officers was created to develop a framework for a privacy legislation that would balance the need for privacy protection, security, sectoral interests, and respond to the domain legislation on the subject. Shri Rahul Matthan of Tri Legal Services prepared an approach paper for the legal framework for a proposed legislation on privacy. The approach paper is now being circulated for seeking opinions of the group of officers and is also being placed on the website of the Department of Personnel and Training for seeking public views on the subject. The Privacy India team at CIS responded to the approach paper and has called for the need for a more detailed study of statutory enforcement models and mechanisms in the creation of privacy legislation.
http://bit.ly/eVTwVC
Privacy and Banking: Do Indian Banking Standards Provide Enough Privacy Protection
Banking is one of the most risky sectors as far as privacy is concerned due to the highly sensitive and personal nature of information which is often exchanged, recorded and retained. Although India has RBI guidelines and legislations to protect data, this blog post looks at the extent of those protections, and what are the areas that still need to be addressed.
http://bit.ly/flq09V

Privacy and Telecommunications: Do We Have the Safeguards?
All of you often come across unsolicited and annoying telemarketing calls/ SMS's, prank calls, pestering calls for payment, etc. Do we have any safeguards against them? This blog post takes a look at the various rules and regulations under Indian law to guard our privacy and confidentiality.
http://bit.ly/hnTwKp

Privacy, Free/Open Source, and the Cloud
A look into the questions that arise in concern to privacy and cloud computing, and how open source plays into the picture.
http://bit.ly/awpCyF

Privacy Concerns in Whole Body Imaging: A Few Questions
Security versus Privacy...it is a question that the world is facing today when it comes to using the Whole Body Imaging technology to screen a traveller visually in airports and other places. By giving real life examples from different parts of the world Elonnai Hickok points out that even if the Government of India eventually decides to advocate the tight security measures with some restrictions then such measures need to balanced against concerns raised for personal freedom. She further argues that privacy is not just data protection but something which must be viewed holistically and contextually when assessing new policies.
http://bit.ly/9rvQPt

American Bar Association Online Privacy Conference: A Report
On 10 November 2010, I attended an American Bar Association online conference on 'Regulating Privacy Across Borders in the Digital Age: An Emerging Global Consensus or Vive la Difference'. The panelists addressed many important global privacy challenges and spoke about the changes the EU directive is looking to take.
http://bit.ly/dy41zc

Telecom

3G Life
You can video chat, stream music and watch TV on your phone. Offering high-speed internet access, 3G would change the world of mobile computing. Nishant Shah's article was published in the Indian Express on 14 November 2010.
http://bit.ly/gyxaW2

Ideology and ICT Policies
For better policies, decision-makers need to know their own and others’ biases, and consider what others are doing, writes Shyam Ponappa in an article published in the Business Standard on 4 November 2010.
http://bit.ly/dbl3Ai

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November 10 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2010-12-31T11:07:42Z

pdf

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/publications-automated/november-10-bulletin

Notification by Madhya Pradesh Government

praskrishna — 2013-01-31T06:43:25Z

Nirmita Narasimhan had prepared a draft notification/circular for the Madhya Pradesh government on e-accessibility. Based on this, the state government of Madhya Pradesh issued a notification to all state departments to have accessible web sites and use Unicode font.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/madhya-pradesh-govt-notification.zip

Nothing unique about this identity

praskrishna — 2011-08-09T09:12:55Z

Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking peeping tom to install your window blinds, opined, not long ago, the American poet and novelist John Perry Barlow once. The statement attains significance in the context of Unique Identification (UID) project which is being touted as a milepost in inclusive politics. Liberalisation evangelists see UID project as the most virtuous thing that can ever happen to the Indian people who find themselves excluded from the system.

So, their ingenious solution is a 12-digit Aadhaar number — a super identity — to help the common man in opening a bank account or ordering a cylinder refill. This is, besides, the existing identities like ration card, the driving license, PAN card and passport to mention a few.

Prima facie, it may all appear euphemistic initiative; for some even very bright and attractive. For, its proclaimed purpose supposedly is to deepen the democratic process.

However, when one talks to civil rights activists who’ve gone hammer and tongs against the project, one will realise the truthfulness of Shakespeare’s observation that ‘a fair exterior may hide a corrupt mind!’

This becomes evident from the fact that the UID project has become the biggest industrial collector of personal information which should frighten up any person still in sensibilities.

The project has already proved disastrous since the unfolding events prove its advocates have not applied much thought to the dangers posed by centralised data collection considering India’s heterogenic population.

In fact, head of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Nandan Nilekani had maintained UID enrolment was voluntary.

However, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy some two months back asserted his government would make UID mandatory unlike his predecessor V.S. Achuthanandan.

"Even in this basic thing, there’s so much confusion. But, the truth is that it’s voluntary. You can’t be coerced into it", confirms a prominent anti-UID campaigner Usha Ramanathan.

She alleged personal information passed onto UIDAI passes through various outsourcing layers compromising safety. It recently happened in Bangalore where a delivery boy demanded a customer’s fingerprint while delivering gas refill!

"Why should anyone give it to an unknown person? It shows the level to which your personal information could get disseminated", she says.

UID, in fact, is supposed to be foolproof. However, again in Bangalore, miscreants could easily fake an Aadhar number in the name of none other than Nandan Nilekani himself!

The fraud came to light when miscreants offered franchisee for UID enrolment for `2.5 lakh.

"Fake UIDs rackets confirm there’s no monitoring. So, how can UIDAI protect your information?" wonders Usha. Nandan Nilekani wants to enroll 60 per cent Indian population by 2014 into UID. However, it’s fast proving a chimerical target as the process involving agency-UIDAI-de-duplicating agency has started taking its toll.

"Initially, Aadhaar number was promised within a week. Now, it’s taking anywhere between three to six months", pointed out executive director, Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) Sunil Abraham.

The project faces problems on cash transfer whose aim is to dismantle public distribution shops (PDS) which once done would put the farmer and customer at the mercy of market for their selling/procurement needs.

For, the farmer won’t be assured of a minimum support price (MSP) while for the customer there is no guarantee that the price would hold good till such time his account gets credited. Further, experts warn the Aadhar number-linked cash transfer will compromise safety. “Cash transfer using bio-metric is not safe. If it were otherwise, ATMs would’ve gone for it. Why didn’t they do it?” asks Sunil Abraham.

Interestingly, a group of students recently did a research on the efficacy of PDS. The research covering nine States cautioned prime minister Manmohan Singh that PDS was better than cash, except in Bihar.

Professor Sridhar Krishnaswamy W.B. University of Jurisdical Sciences fears the Corproates could link one’s Aadhar number to bank account to judge his or her behavioural pattern.

"It’s not right. Instead of resorting to blanket surveillance, government should go in for targeted surveillance," Sunil said.

This article by T. S. Sreenivasa Raghavan was published in the Deccan Chronicle on August 5, 2011. The original can be read here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/nothing-unique-about-identity

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